Understanding Ourselves in Time

This year the 30th Schools’ History Project Annual Conference held at Leeds Trinity University 6–8 July provided an opportunity to meet history teachers and ITE tutors from schools and universities all over the country. Participants appreciate the three days’ injection of SHP enthusiasm at the end of a long school year.

The SHP conference has had a reputation for delivering inspiring workshops and presentations on teaching history for three decades and this year was no exception. I attended an excellent workshop on Raising Attainment by the indefatigable Dale Banham from Northgate High School, Ipswich. Dale brought his usual creativity to bear on the challenge of teaching the new contact-heavy GCSE. I was able to pass on his tips for enabling GCSE history students to commit to memory, construct arguments and communicate their ideas to the history department at a CPD session in one of our partner schools.

SHP has always championed the teaching of historical skills and concepts, so a well delivered session on causation was very welcome. Two history teachers from Cambridgeshire showed how they are planning for progression in their students’ thinking about ‘Why questions’ and how they tackle common misconceptions. In another excellent session, Ruth Lingard from York grappled with redesigning her KS3 schemes of work and shared classroom resources to ‘Put the Fizz back into Key Stage 3 Enquiries.’ I was inspired by the innovative resources Ruth showed us from the YorkClio website and have used the disability timeline this term with our PGDE History students to explore teaching the concepts of change and continuity.

Participating in the SHP conference helped to clarify my thinking about the explicit teaching of historical skills and informed a rewrite of our History PGDE course with a new handbook aimed to develop student teachers’ confidence in the teaching of historical skills and concepts. This year’s PGDE history students will lead university sessions showing each other examples of their classroom experiences in teaching tricky historical concepts like causation, continuity, significance and interpretations.

My thanks go to the Research Committee for supporting my attendance at this conference.

Sally Davies, PGDE History Tutor, The School of Education, The University of Sheffield.