Triumphs Show

The regular ‘Triumph Shows’ that feature in Teaching History offer a quick way for teachers to celebrate their successes and share inspirational ideas with one another. While the ideas are always explained in sufficient depth for others to be able to take them forward in their own practice, the simple Triumph Show format allows teachers to present individual activities or one-off events that have had a particular impact on their students. The website search function means that relevant ‘Triumph Shows’ can be identified in relation to particular substantive content or principles of planning, but simply browsing through the collection can also provide powerful inspiration and trigger new ideas. It might even inspire you to begin writing for Teaching History yourself – sharing a recent ‘Triumph’ is a great way to start!  

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  • Triumphs Show 193: Year 8 imagine the First World War trenches

    Article

    Deep into my PGCE year, I found myself discussing with my mentor how to pre-empt the barriers to understanding the past that students may face. One barrier we discussed was presentism: the tendency of students to interpret the past in light of their own modern knowledge, values and experiences. In particular, we considered...

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  • Triumphs Show 192: Balancing micro- and macronarratives of the Holocaust

    Article

    Lien de Jong celebrates her 90th birthday in September 2023. In lots of ways, her biography is similar to many Europeans of her generation. She was born, grew up and went to school in The Hague during the 1930s. She trained to work in a nursery. In the 1950s, she...

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  • Triumphs Show: ‘The Strands of Memory’

    Article

    In 2014, a group of French pupils from Lycée Léopold Sédar Senghor in Évreux was due to meet a British Second World War veteran, Eric Rackham, to hear him talk about his war experiences. Sadly, he passed away before the planned meeting. Paradoxically, this failed meeting led to the development...

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  • Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network

    Article

    In April 2019, I was in a bit of a rut. My enquiry questions and lesson sequences seemed stale. I felt like I had been at my school for too long. To mix things up, I secured a new role for September at a start-up school.  Full of excitement, I...

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  • Triumphs Show 182: A public lecture series

    Article

    The history we present to students, however rigorous and challenging, and however full of integrity in eflecting history as a discipline, is a shiny show of our best resources. Peeling back this curtain and allowing students to see the real world of academic history was a major motivation in inviting some...

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  • Triumphs Show 180: From ‘most able’ to ‘mini’ historians

    Article

    Finding ways to stretch and challenge the highest-attaining students has been a long-standing concern of many history teachers, and strategies for doing so have developed far beyond merely bolting on additional tasks. One way in which I have sought to challenge my own high-attaining students has been by setting them...

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  • Triumphs Show 176: Using material culture as a means to generate an enquiry on the British Empire

    Article

    Triumphs Show is a regular feature which offers a quick way for teachers to celebrate their successes and share inspirational ideas with one another. While the ideas are always explained in sufficient depth for others to be able to take them forward in their own practice, the simple format allows...

    Click to view
  • Triumphs Show 173: Teaching Black Tudors

    Article

    I am ashamed to admit that, until recently, my teaching of black history did not go beyond schemes of work on the transatlantic slave trade and the civil rights movement in the USA. This all changed in November 2017 when I heard Dr Miranda Kaufmann on the ‘BBC History Extra’...

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  • Triumphs Show 172: The history classroom lending library

    Article

    Tim Jenner and Jessica Angell share how the History Department Lending Library at Cambourne Village College began and developed, and the positive impact it has had on both students and staff.

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  • Triumphs Show 171: preparatory reading for A-level essays

    Article

    The first question my A-level students always used to ask when receiving back an essay was, ‘What mark did I get?’ The second question I used to hope they would ask was ‘How could I improve my work?’ I stress ‘used to’ because increasingly I do not give marks when...

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  • Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons

    Article

    Why ‘do’ local history? The new (grades 9–1) GCSE specifications place a lot of importance on the local environment. The rationale for this is to get students to situate a site in its historical context, and to examine the relationship between local and national developments. Initially this change was the...

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  • Triumphs Show 169: Using 360 VR Technology with the GCSE Historic Environment study

    Article

    One of the biggest changes in the new GCSE specifications is the requirement for all students to undertake a study of the historic environment. Unsurprisingly the approach taken by the exam boards to this requirement varies widely. While some boards allow schools a free choice of site, others have decided...

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  • Triumphs Show 167: Keeping the 1960s complicated

    Article

    During her PGCE year, it became evident to Rachel Coleman just how much pupils struggled with the complicated nature of history. They were troubled in particular by the lack of definitive answers, by the range of perspectives that might be held at the time of a particular event or development...

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  • Triumphs Show 164: interpretations at A Level

    Article

    Julia Huber and Katherine Turner found that their A-level students struggled to identify the line of argument in a passage of historical scholarship, an essential prerequisite for answering their coursework question. They devised an activity that helped students to unpick and visually contrast historians’ interpretations of the relative importance of...

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  • Triumphs Show 160: Prezi and propaganda

    Article

    Laura Tilley recognised that her Year 9 students were finding it difficult to work out the intended message of visual propaganda. To help her students make better use of the substantive knowledge they already had, she devised an interactive activity using a presentation software, Prezi. This approach provided students with...

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  • Triumphs Show 159: teaching paragraph construction

    Article

    My adventures in dancing in the classroom started back in the autumn term. I was working with a group of Year 8 students looking at interpretations of King John and we were selecting and analysing quotations from historians as part of the enquiry question ‘Was King John really so bad?' My students were struggling with...

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  • Triumphs Show 158: interactive learning walls and substantive vocabulary

    Article

    Year 10 use an interactive learning wall to cement their understanding of substantive vocabulary It is the first term of their GCSE course and Year 10 are already starting to flag a little. They are enjoying studying the Russian Revolution, but are struggling to remember all the new words they...

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  • Triumphs Show 157: What makes art history?

    Article

    What do 14 Year 7 students, an art teacher, a history teacher and the Victoria and Albert Museum have in common? They are all part of the ‘Stronger Together' Museum Champion project run by The Langley Academy and the River & Rowing Museum and supported by Arts Council England, designed to...

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  • Triumphs Show 156: Fresh perspectives on the First World War

    Article

    Year 9 think they know a lot about the First World War. After all, they read Michael Morpurgo's novel Private Peaceful in their English lessons all the way back in Year 7, they've seen Blackadder so many times they can recite it, and in the centenary year of the war's...

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  • Triumphs Show 155: beyond trivial judgements of 'bias'

    Article

    Towards victory in that battle... 10A were nearly a term into their GCSE history course, working on an 1890-1918 British history ‘depth study'. They had already completed work on the Liberal welfare reforms and on the women's suffrage movement, and they had been practising a range of source evaluation approaches....

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