Having been on maternity leave for a year, I've amassed lots of great ideas I want to try out in my teaching from Twitter, Teach Meet South Historians as well as my own thoughts. However I thought I needed to narrow them down with the aim of successfully implementing a few as the new term begins. Here are five ideas I am going to try from September.
1. Extracts from historians
At the @TMSouthHistory Teach Meet back in June, @AndrewSweet4 discussed the importance of using works by historians in lessons for all age groups. A point that stuck with me is how can we expect students to write and speak like historians if they are not familiar with historical writing. It is therefore really important that they read what experts have to say on the subject they are studying.
To achieve this in lessons, I've started to collate a PowerPoint that has quotes by well-known historians such as Dan Jones, Mary Beard and Suzannah Lipscomb which link to topics we study. This does mean that Year 7 will be tackling an extract from the wonderful Mary Beard on the Romans, but what an achievement they will feel when they understand what a well-regarded historian has to say on the topic.
Andrew also made the point that we need to add to our own 'expert' knowledge on the areas we are teaching. I've really enjoyed picking up a history book over the summer, which I can then drop into lessons. I have found Julia Boyd's Travellers of the Third Reich particularly interesting (as have many a twitter-history-teacher!) and am looking forward to including some of the anecdotes from it with my Year 10s.
2. Close reading
In order to allow students to access these works, we need to give them the structure and skills to do so successfully.
During my NQT year (2015), my HoD @MrsThorne had created a fab topic about food through time in Britain, which I really enjoyed teaching Year 8. A part of this involved reading 'How the potato changed the world' (to which obviously as a keen NQT I brought real potatoes in which I'd taped questions to as 'hot potatoes'). It was quite a difficult and long piece of text, but we went through it in lesson, noting down the gist of what each paragraph was about, as well as highlighting technical language related to the potato and the historical detail.
This task had slipped my mind until @LRyall_History posted some close reading of Ian Mortimer's Time Travellers Guide to Elizabethan England. I asked her what steps she used with the students to achieve this, and she said:
1- read and highlight names of people
2- read and highlight places
3- specific tasks to do with the text
4- extra: pick 5 words unfamiliar with then define/google them.
Therefore, students have read the text a couple of times without really knowing they are reading it and starting to take on board what it is saying.
I am definitely going to give this a go in my lessons, and will see if I need to adapt the process for certain year groups or individual students.
3. Visualiser
@LRyall_History spoke at @TMSouthHistory about how she fell back in love with her visualiser. Her presentation made me consider how I taught in my current classroom for a year without even turning the visualiser on! So rather than letting it just take up space and collect a lovely layer of dust, I am vowing to utilise it this year. I really think it will be beneficial in lessons, in part to help with what I've already spoken about above as students could see me highlighting certain parts or directing them to particular sentences.
I also want to use it at the start of term to demonstrate presentation expectations- as Lucy said, even if you have it drawn on a whiteboard or shown on a PowerPoint, many students still cannot replicate this in their book.
4. Cornell note taking
For a while I had seen teachers like my PGCE mentor @NoadsHistEsn and @Jmosley_history talking about their use of the Cornell note taking method. Have a look at the explanations shown below:
I am going to start using it with my A Level classes to help them with making notes for their further reading. It gives them a consistent way of writing key points down, provides me with evidence of their reading and their understanding, and is also really useful when it comes to revision.
5. BUG the question
Finally, I had not heard of this until this year but think it's a really helpful technique and good habit for GCSE and A Level students to get into when looking at and doing exam questions. I have both at @TMSouthHistory and a West Wilts Teaching Alliance meet seen @CAHumanities explain the simplicity and power of BUG the question.
Box the command words
Underline the keywords
Glance back at the question and the marks
I have added this to my GCSE display in my classroom, and will be embedding the technique with students in lesson.
I was also inspired by @MrsJHistory 's Elizabethan exam question starters that I used her layout to further this push to help students BUG the question by creating my own starters for Germany.
1. Extracts from historians
At the @TMSouthHistory Teach Meet back in June, @AndrewSweet4 discussed the importance of using works by historians in lessons for all age groups. A point that stuck with me is how can we expect students to write and speak like historians if they are not familiar with historical writing. It is therefore really important that they read what experts have to say on the subject they are studying.
To achieve this in lessons, I've started to collate a PowerPoint that has quotes by well-known historians such as Dan Jones, Mary Beard and Suzannah Lipscomb which link to topics we study. This does mean that Year 7 will be tackling an extract from the wonderful Mary Beard on the Romans, but what an achievement they will feel when they understand what a well-regarded historian has to say on the topic. Andrew also made the point that we need to add to our own 'expert' knowledge on the areas we are teaching. I've really enjoyed picking up a history book over the summer, which I can then drop into lessons. I have found Julia Boyd's Travellers of the Third Reich particularly interesting (as have many a twitter-history-teacher!) and am looking forward to including some of the anecdotes from it with my Year 10s.
2. Close reading
In order to allow students to access these works, we need to give them the structure and skills to do so successfully.
During my NQT year (2015), my HoD @MrsThorne had created a fab topic about food through time in Britain, which I really enjoyed teaching Year 8. A part of this involved reading 'How the potato changed the world' (to which obviously as a keen NQT I brought real potatoes in which I'd taped questions to as 'hot potatoes'). It was quite a difficult and long piece of text, but we went through it in lesson, noting down the gist of what each paragraph was about, as well as highlighting technical language related to the potato and the historical detail.
This task had slipped my mind until @LRyall_History posted some close reading of Ian Mortimer's Time Travellers Guide to Elizabethan England. I asked her what steps she used with the students to achieve this, and she said:
1- read and highlight names of people
2- read and highlight places
3- specific tasks to do with the text
4- extra: pick 5 words unfamiliar with then define/google them.
Therefore, students have read the text a couple of times without really knowing they are reading it and starting to take on board what it is saying.
I am definitely going to give this a go in my lessons, and will see if I need to adapt the process for certain year groups or individual students.
3. Visualiser
@LRyall_History spoke at @TMSouthHistory about how she fell back in love with her visualiser. Her presentation made me consider how I taught in my current classroom for a year without even turning the visualiser on! So rather than letting it just take up space and collect a lovely layer of dust, I am vowing to utilise it this year. I really think it will be beneficial in lessons, in part to help with what I've already spoken about above as students could see me highlighting certain parts or directing them to particular sentences.
I also want to use it at the start of term to demonstrate presentation expectations- as Lucy said, even if you have it drawn on a whiteboard or shown on a PowerPoint, many students still cannot replicate this in their book.
4. Cornell note taking
For a while I had seen teachers like my PGCE mentor @NoadsHistEsn and @Jmosley_history talking about their use of the Cornell note taking method. Have a look at the explanations shown below:
5. BUG the question
Finally, I had not heard of this until this year but think it's a really helpful technique and good habit for GCSE and A Level students to get into when looking at and doing exam questions. I have both at @TMSouthHistory and a West Wilts Teaching Alliance meet seen @CAHumanities explain the simplicity and power of BUG the question.Box the command words
Underline the keywords
Glance back at the question and the marks
I have added this to my GCSE display in my classroom, and will be embedding the technique with students in lesson.
I was also inspired by @MrsJHistory 's Elizabethan exam question starters that I used her layout to further this push to help students BUG the question by creating my own starters for Germany.
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