As usual, I have spent some time today reflecting on what I can change about my practice following the WLFS conference.

I can plan some short thematics for KS3

Elizabeth Carr’s reminder of Michael Riley’s development study, Toilets through Time, had made me think about where I can put shorter development studies into my KS3 programme of study, potentially replacing some of the chunkier ones. I love development studies at KS3 (that’s my workshop for SHP this summer) but they take a long time and it is easy to lose the thread on one hour of lessons a week. A shorter, snappier version would achieve the same chronology recap and focus on change and continuity and, cleverly considered, could underpin our study of Medicine at GCSE.

I can do multiple choice quizzing to help build student confidence at A-level

Paula Lobo shared how she provides four statements analysing a source, from which the students have to pick the correct one. At the end, she works the correct statements into model answers. This modelling has helped her students to do what comes naturally to those of us who have been doing it for years. I’ve been puzzling over how to better help my students summarise the message of an interpretation for their A-level paper, and I think this will work really well.

I can pair knowledge quizzes with source analyses

Also from Paula – providing a knowledge quiz first forces students to see the link between contextual knowledge and unpicking historical sources. My colleague has been focusing on student skills in this area lately so I am going to pass this on to him to look at. What I really liked about Paula’s quizzes is that the questions were so massively long: they gave an enormous information to go along with the answer students gave. Sneaky, like extra veggies in a bolognese.

I can improve my year 12 mini-NEA project

At the start of the year I wrote that my year 12s would be writing short NEAs on each Henry this year. They have completed their Henry VII essays (more on that at a later date). I was chatting about it with Sally Wilson who said she thought she could do the same, but would ask them to also include sources, to give them even more prep for the NEA. I am going to do the same with the Henry VIII essay.

I can better prepare my students for their NEA by setting clever summer work

After Jim Carroll’s session, I decided that by setting a research task into the context of authors of some key interpretations about their NEA topic over the summer, I can clarify the process they need to go through when they are choosing their own interpretations. We offer two topics to one class at sixth form so this may take some careful planning, but I’ve got time.

I could be reading more

To be fair, this isn’t news, but still.

Christine Counsell’s consideration of our responsibility as a profession chimed true. I spend Sunday mornings reading blogs and catching up; I’m going to make sure I include more history teaching blogs in that, and at least one Teaching History article. I’m going to shame-facedly admit that my last three issues are sitting pristine next to my armchair, having only been subjected to a cursory flick, scan of the Cunning Plans and read of Mummy Mummy. I can do better than this.