Overview & Depth
Assessment criteria for public examinations (at A-level and GCSE) require students to study history at different scales of resolution. Sometimes they are required to adopt a wide vantage point that allows them to survey a long sweep of time, making it possible to see the prevailing trends and turning points. On other occasions they are required to zoom in close, focusing on a much shorter time-span, with scope to examine the lives of individuals and particular groups of people. The materials in this section deal with the distinctive characteristics of schemes of work operating at these different levels and also prompt teachers to consider how overview and depth studies can best be combined and sequenced at Key Stage 3 – helping students to develop more coherent frameworks on which to build their own ‘big pictures’ of the past. Read more
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The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
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‘Compressing and rendering’: using biography to teach big stories
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Short cuts to deep knowledge
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Cunning Plan 186: teaching Samurai Japan in Key Stage 3
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Using individuals’ stories to help GCSE students to explain change and causation
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Cunning Plan 179: using TV producers’ techniques to make the most effective use of retrieval practice
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Using an anthology of substantial sources at GCSE
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Making reading routine
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Structuring a history curriculum for powerful revelations
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Acquainted or intimate? Background knowledge and subsequent learning
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Of the many significant things that have ever happened, what should we teach?
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Putting Catlin in his place?
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Cunning Plan 163.1: GCSE Thematic study
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Exploring big overviews through local depth
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Historical Perspective & 'Big History'
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Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change
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Move Me On 157: Getting knowledge across
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New, Novice or Nervous? 157: Teaching Overview
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Assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
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Getting medieval (and global) at Key Stage 3
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