Teaching of History
Key events in the Arab-Israeli conflict: Watch the videos here
Another great resource from the BBC that will aid revision on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Watch them here.
The Marxist interpretation of history: A brief introduction
A quick look at a school of history that sees past events in a particular way. This may be useful for those wanting to study history at university.
AJP Taylor: A brief overview
Johnny Isaac today gave our Oxbridge History group an excellent overview of AJP Taylor’s work and significance as an historian. I’ve uploaded his presentation below.
Many thanks Johnny.
read more...»Free lunchtime lectures at the National Army Museum
The National Army Museum holds free lectures on a military theme every Thursday. School holidays are a perfect time to go along and learn something outside of the curriculum. The next lecture, entitled ‘Six VCs before breakfast’ and delivered by Peter Doyle, tells the story of the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915. It’ll be interesting to hear whether Doyle takes the traditional ‘cock-up’ line about the landings and ensuing fighting between British, ANZAC, French and Turkish forces.
Andrew Chater’s ‘Timelines’
This is a superb resource that enables pupils to get an overview of a thousand years of British history.
Colonel Bob Stewart recalls his experiences in Bosnia
Colonel Bob Stewart visited Hampton School this lunctime to deliver a fascinating talk about his time as commander of the 1st Battalion The Cheshire Regiment in Bosnia during the brutal conflict there in the early 1990s.
read more...»Gavin Mortimer reveals the historical writer’s craft
Gavin Mortimer, the writer of bestselling books, visited our school last week and gave our Historians an insight into the life of the historical author. Gavin, who has published books on topics as diverse as the SAS, sporting heroes of the Great War and the race to be the first female to swim the channel, revealed the painstaking process behind the researching and writing of his tomes. For his book on the SAS he had to go through a lengthy and delicate approval process before the Regiment would give him permission to talk to their veterans. After this hurdle was negotiated it was a case of flying all over the world to interview former soldiers – many of whom had not told their story since the end of the Second World War.
read more...»Have politicians always ruined the work of soldiers? The Oxbridge Group write up
Many thanks to Gareth Thomas for writing this up…
This week’s session mainly focussed on the effect the involvement of politicians had on peace treaties. The main questions asked were:
What makes a lasting peace treaty?
Why have so many treaties in the past failed?
Is the failure of a peace treaty due to poor planning on behalf of the main players involved, i.e. politicians?
Why do politicians tend to ‘screw up’ when it comes to peace treaties?
The session started with a detailed look at Iraq. The group was dissolved into pairs whereupon each pair would compare/contrast/discuss, and produced five reasons why the current situation in Iraq can be classed as a failure.
read more...»Studying the Rwandan genocide: Educational resources from SURF
SURF, a charity that helps survivors of the genocide in Rwanda, has produced a series of educational resources that are available on their website. The resources, which include lesson plans, should prove useful to those who teach about this terrible tragedy.
http://www.survivors-fund.org.uk/resources/education/educational_materials.php
Have politicians always destroyed the work of soldiers?
This morning we start our extra sessions for students in our school who are thinking about studying History at university. The classes are designed to broaden out pupils’ historical knowledge, understanding, their awareness of history as a discipline and to enable them to explore their own interests beyond the syllabus that we teach.
To start we’re going to look at how, over the last couple of hundred years, politicians have formalised the work of soldiers. After each major war there is nearly always a political settlement, in the form of a treaty. The question for our pupils is how far the politicians have made a settlement that has done justice to the work that the soldiers have done. Prior to the session we’ve asked the participants to research the following treaties:
Treaty of Utrecht, 1713
Treaty of Paris, 1763
Congress of Vienna, 1816
Treaty of Paris 1856
Treaty of Vereeniging, 1902
Treaty of Versailles, 1919
Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, 1945
The situation in Iraq today
A study day at The National Army Museum: Great War technology Part One
On Tuesday our school visited The National Army Museum for a study day. After looking around the excellent galleries (our students particularly liked the exhibition looking at the experience of 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand Province. We had two lectures from the education staff. Below is the first part of a write up of the notes that I made.
read more...»Cold War Wildcard GCSE Quizzes
Test your knowledge of key names, events and concepts in the history of the Cold War with these four “wildcard"-style quizzes. We give you a partially completed term. Your task is to complete it.
read more...»Taxpayers’ money well spent for a change
There have been plenty of people in the public eye recently who seem to have misused our hard earned money. Similarly, the BBC has had a rough time of late over fake phone-ins, dodgy editing and the rest. However, it maybe worth highlighting, though of not much consolation to non-historians, that the Corporation’s website has some quite excellent content that will help history students of whatever level. For once I think that our money has been wisely invested. Take a look for yourself:
The Top Ten Greatest Britons
Not to be outdone by tutor2U’s excellent Politics blog here is a challenge you could set for your History students. The task is to create a list of the Top Ten Greatest Britons. We’ll post an initial list and then will change it to reflect any comments that we receive. Here’s our Top Ten Greatest Britons:
read more...»GCSE History: Can you name the key figures in the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Have a go at putting names to faces:
http://www.tutor2u.net/history/games/arabisrael-nameme.html
