High Dive Teaching

My brother’s lamentable absence from his convenient London flat tonight provides me with a rare opportunity to reflect on today’s excellent conference. It was really quality stuff, all of it, and maybe even more helpful than the summer conference – less to absorb and coming at a time of year when enthusiasm is flagging in the face of mocks, controlled assessment and data scrutinising, coupled with more natural energy drains like the darker days and grey weather. There are many things I can take back that will have an impact on my practice, but I think Alison Kitson’s session on the 18th century is going to be most useful because it will change some of my lessons this week.

When we reconsidered our key stage three programme of study in July, we decided to adjust year 8. We’d always been a unit light here and all filled the gap with something different, but the decision to move the Civil War unit to year 7 made the situation rather more pressing. We had also identified a gap in student knowledge when they arrived in year 9: when teaching the causes of WW1 they struggled to comprehend the impact of the crumbling European empires, or, indeed, the role of empires at all.

We decided to adjust our study of the British Empire. We split the unit in two, to look at both the rise and decline. The rise comes first, with the working enquiry question, “What impact did the British Empire have on Britain?” This then segues neatly into the Industrial Revolution, allows for a world study encompassing the America revolution and civil war, and can then be rounded off with a collapse of empire study at the end.

Having taught our usual year 8 opening chronological study on the history of Britain through art, I have been working on the rise of Empire for four weeks, so roughly 6 lessons. It has proved difficult to resource. There’s not much out there on the impact on Britain of its colonies. I gave up after a frustrating 20 minutes of Googling, after having been met with site after site detailing the impact of the Empire on insert-colony-here. I’m sure there’re actual books out there about it – so I will be better prepared for next year. In the meantime I trawled old text books for material not focused on interpretations, and chalked up quite a success after a lesson on British taxes on Indian cloth was met with a, “OH so that’s why we ended up with more cloth factories here!” comment from Fraser, my resident year 8 Industrial Revolution buff.

But, inspiration has petered out a bit. I was toying with the idea of doing forced child migration and Barnardo, then looking at children left in Britain during this time, inspired by an episode of British History in Numbers on Radio 4 (podcasts still available – highly recommended if you’re a bit of a stats geek like me). I was left with a nagging feeling that I was missing something, though, especially since, for the first time ever, I am teaching top sets in year 8 this year^. I wanted to give them a better understanding of the state of flux.

Alison’s presentation today, then, couldn’t have come at a better time. Clearly the biggest impact of the Empire was in terms of wealth, which I have tried, and largely failed, to express through my examples in lessons thus far. Looking at the growing wealth gap in Britain and the creation of the Middling Sort, alongside the changes in agriculture and the squeeze on the working class (I can bring in Ian Dawson’s Corn Laws activity here #SHPMashUp) provides me with the perfect link for the two units. There’s only so far one can go with the impact of Barbadian sugar, Indian tea and cotton and African gold, but looking at the bigger picture* is where the real story lies. As I mentioned in my post, too, I can have the tea thread running all the way through, from the growth of tea plantations in India to the tea drinking classes in 18th century England to the cup of Earl Grey in the Great Reform Act lesson.

So, the devil is not in the detail in this case! This week’s lessons will focus on 18th century changes and the tastes of the population, in both tea and other Empire goods such as that mahogany tea table mentioned in the first reading we had, and the deteriorating living standards among the poor, leading to the growing agitation for a voice, among the middle and lower classes. This then leads into the political changes.

I love it when a plan comes together.

^ we’ve not set in history before, but are timetabled against English this year and are using their sets. Across key stage three I have three top, one middle and four bottom sets. It’s been very interesting, and probably worthy of a blog post in itself.

* I quite often find myself unable to see the wood for the trees in this way.

A regular at SHP is the HMI national adviser for History – what would we do without him? He’s very generous with his time and always shares useful and insightful things. I fear I never spell his name correctly, though.

It turns out Michael is a fan of the 18th century, having taught it at ks3, o level and a level.

We look at some political cartoons to begin with and consider the way historical figures have been characterised in them.

Michael’s slides will be available on the SHP website and it’s all about history in schools. It’s a very mixed bag. In primary, history is better taught when taught discretely. Knowledge is episodic and chronological understanding is shaky. H shares an example from a primary school who are attempting an enquiry based system, showing real willingness to engage with the pedagogy, and pleads with is to develop closer links with feeder schools, which is timely because we are off to a feeder school on Tuesday afternoon to teach a master class to year 6.

At secondary level, history is a success story: well taught and well led. Attainment is high and entries are rising.

I do love this graph and it is always worth looking at again. The 2013 data will show an even greater increase. The picture is the same for A level. Something is definitely going well, no matter what the headlines say.

But, issues. Non-specialist teaching – 28% with no relevant degree. Change to two year key stage three, or competencies. Reduction in teaching time. Insufficient emphasis on analytical and discursive writing development: too much descriptive and creative writing. Poor planning for progression – tying in nicely with Ian and Richard’s session from earlier. Misuse of levels of attainment. The failure of some subject leaders to provide a rationale (ditto). History has become marginalised; standards are too variable and progress is not fast enough.

We critique a two year key stage three program of study. Someone comments that the chronology is all over the place – do people really think that teaching units in chronological order helps them to understand chronology better? I don’t.

Michael talks about all/most/some and says it is a huge cop out in terms of differentiation, and his colleagues in other subjects agree. This is partly because it creates homogenised groups; the associated descriptors are often trite.

Re: one year GCSE – apparently heads get students to take both history and geography in one year and take the best grade for ebacc. Horrifying! We whizz through our GCSE course to be ready for revision by January of year 11 but I don’t think we could go any quicker.

Onto highly effective teaching. Good subject expertise, rigorous enquiry, good historical thinking and understanding, solid assessment. Michael bypasses the skills vs knowledge debate with barely a raised eyebrow in its direction. Developing historical thinking: Michael uses an example from a primary school where they study Samuel Pepys and are able to develop an understanding of that uncertainty in history (case studies available on Ofsted website when they have finished being reviewed, along with all other documentation, to check they don’t promulgate a particular teaching style, in line with Wilshaw’s wishes).

I’m a bit distracted by this news for a moment and by the time I get back to concentrating we are considering data which shows GCSE outcomes for SEN, ethnic groups and FSM, as well as breaking down entries by area – there are more in the east of England than anywhere else, for example. Links are expressed between history and English, and the importance of better literacy.

What can the inspectorate do for you?
There’s a dedicated subject page on the Ofsted website. There are lots of case studies there, and a training resource to use in subject meetings with some helpful questions to ask.

The new key stage three offers lots of opportunities. Can you sign up to the spirit of it? – even if you don’t agree with the way the content or aims are expressed.

Some ideas about challenges. A movement away from what we teach but instead how we teach it – we need to plug into modern scholarship much more.

We are invited to email Michael with answers to this question by Easter, so he can use the information anonymously in his session at the HA in May.

Michael shows us the seven myths of Ofsted’s view on history teaching to finish, and a clip from Horrible Histories – Born to Rule by the Four Georges.

Diana Laffin presenting on A level teaching, using a study of Lloyd George. Diana sets us a starter task of look at a statue of him being unveiled by Prince Charles in Parliament Square and asking us to guess when it was unveiled. Turns out it was in 2007 and it’s an interesting interpretations exercise to consider what other statues there are in Parliament Square and when they were put there.

Is Lloyd George Britain’s best PM? He had a lot of impact on normal people. He made a great speech when he said that the cost of running a duke is equivalent to two dreadnoughts. He had a film made about him during his lifetime – the first one.
Why did it take so long for him to get a statue, then?

We begin with an art exhibition of images of Lloyd George, from which we must make inferences about him. This helps students to pose questions about him – we generate some of these and share them. Diana uses the questions to help plan the enquiry, using some of them as research homeworks.

Now, onto pants! You can choose the big safety pants: cover everything in extreme detail, fill in the blanks study packs full of exam criteria. They keep management happy and make you feel safe but will they encourage and enthuse your students? Sometimes the sexy pants have to come out to solve this problem: student-led learning, lots of random sources etc.

Most able students. Diana shares her definition of a gifted historian – this would go nicely in the front of the assessment booklet we are planning to make up for our sixth form students.

Should we bombard with past questions in case they come up? Diana says that the problem of doing this is that students might go into the exam and see a question they think they’ve done before, and regurgitate the answer, only there is a subtle difference in date or focus and they won’t do very well. So, it’s important to teach them the skills of applying the knowledge to different questions.

Diana shares some readings she gives out for homework. She differentiates readings among her students and in the next lesson the form seminar groups to discuss the learning from the articles and then come to a developed judgement at the end – not a conclusion, because there are always variations, qualifications, developments on those judgements. We discuss the different readings and come up with an answer to the question, “Why does he have a statue there and why did it take so long?”

Diana recommends moving as much knowledge acquisition as possible outside of lessons. She suggests calling it “prep” and shows us a log sheet for students to complete about their readings, which she backs up with positive reinforcement by lavishing time and interest on students who do the reading. One in three lessons is a seminar style lesson such as the one we modelled in today’s session. Think this would work especially well with the year 13 students.

We return to the question. Diana enthuses about the History of Stamps book she receives recently, which she says she did not expect to find so interesting. We look at a stamp of Lloyd George, depicting him as a young man. We return to the film, which was a huge and expensive project, directed by Maurice Elvey. Unfortunately it was rubbished by a commentator who wrote that it was made by nasty immigrants (children of Jewish refugees) so Lloyd George bought everything to do with it, at a cost of £20,000, and it wasn’t released until 1996 when a descendant came across the materials. It is very useful to watch as an interpretations exercise, although it can be a challenging process.

Supporting the rest. Encourage self review and make it clear that everyone benefits from identifying and acknowledging things they can improve. Make literacy big – key terms and vocabulary at the heart of your study. Here have been some lunchtime support sessions but they are not always popular and can put students off continuing with their study of the subject. The results of Diana’s study of what works with support showed that students like to feel supported – worksheets and readings and all that can only go so far, but it is the fluffy, supportive environment that they appreciate the most.