Section 2: In-service activities

Activity 1

Audience

Key stage 2 and 3 subject coordinators, heads of department and teachers in a group or cluster of schools.

Purpose

(i) To foster good links between history teachers in primary and secondary schools.

(ii) To reflect on current circumstances with a view to enhancing primary/secondary liaison in history.

Activity

(i) Consider and discuss OPPORTUNITIES for ensuring progression and continuity in history in your network/cluster/school partnership. Chart the outcomes and consider the issues as STRENGTHS on which to build future development.

(ii) What are the barriers or constraints to ensuring progression and continuity? Chart the outcomes and consider the issues as OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT.

(iii) Select ISSUES from both lists with a view to effecting improvement in pupils' progression and continuity through action planning.

The following prompts may aid action planning:

• what aspects of liaison/progression/continuity will we focus on initially?
• why are we doing this and how will pupils benefit?
• how will we know when we have been successful?
• what action do we need to take?
• what is the timescale for this?
• who will take responsibility for action items?
• what will we do with the resulting action/information -- who needs to see it?
• how will we know how successful we have been?

Follow-up

A detailed action plan with a commitment to review and evaluate agreed strategies for improving primary/secondary liaison.

Activity 2

Audience

Key stage 3 teachers of history. The outcomes would usefully be shared with key stage 2 colleagues.

Purpose

(i) To reflect on the historical experience encountered by pupils in their first term of year 7.

(ii) To examine the effectiveness of teaching and learning for continuity and progression.

(iii) To share and discuss outcomes with key stage 2 teachers.

Activity

A group discussion to take place in the history department.

Some prompt questions:

• what does our first year 7 lesson look like? Why have we chosen that approach?
• how do we go about finding out what pupils know, understand and can do at the start of the year?
• how does this influence year 7 planning so that it builds on the historical experience of pupils in year 6?
• can we do more to improve this initial experience of secondary school history to stimulate, motivate and enthuse pupils' interest even further in the subject?
• what are the best ways of sharing our thoughts?

Follow-up

Outcomes of this analysis should be shared with partner schools and with senior management within school.

Activity 3

Audience

Key stages 2 and 3 teachers of history (subject  coordinators/heads of department).

Purpose

To raise awareness of teaching and learning in history at key stages 2 and 3.

Activity

Teachers in the respective key stages to make a short presentation on curriculum planning, teaching approaches, pupil assessment and evaluation, drawing on curriculum plans and pupils' work. Following the presentations the group could discuss the following:

(i) how teaching and learning in history are structured/conducted at key stages 2 and 3.

(ii) the similarities and differences in the range and breadth of history teaching and learning in individual schools.

(iii) the expectations of what pupils know, understand and can do at the respective key stage.

(iv) how pupils' work is assessed against the level descriptions.

Follow-up

This is dependent on the outcomes of discussions above -- an action plan might result, if it is desirable and agreed, to enhance progression and continuity and facilitate a smoother transition between key stages 2 and 3.

Activity 4

Audience

Key stages 2 and 3 teachers of history (subject coordinators/heads of department).

Purpose

To raise awareness of curriculum planning in history at both key stages.

Activity

Colleagues to bring and talk through curriculum planning frameworks/schemes of work for history. Attention could be focused on paired schemes of work for related studies such as:

Prompts for discussion:

• how are the plans expressed -- formats/frameworks and long-term plans to show how the history studies at key stages 2 and 3 are allocated?
• how much time is spent?
• how are the learning objectives/intentions expressed? What are the expectations in terms of progression from previous topics/enquiries?
• how do schools plan for progression in aspects of historical knowledge, skills and understanding across topics/enquiries and between year groups?
• what is the balance between knowledge and understanding and the skills in history?
• how is overview and depth achieved?
• what sources do pupils use in the course of historical study (artefacts, documents, pictorial, people, buildings and sites)?
• where and when do pupils visit sites of historic interest?
• what opportunities are there for the use of ICT?

Follow-up

Discuss how progression in history can be more effectively achieved.

Activity 5

Audience

Key stages 2 and 3 teachers of history.

Purpose

(i) To review the nature and format of records of pupils' history achievements used by primary schools.

(ii) To reflect on current pupil records with a view to providing information that helps secondary teachers build on pupils' progress and match work more effectively to pupils' abilities and achievements.

Activity:

(i) Presentation by feeder school teachers of their current year 6 individual pupil records and follow-up plenary discussion.

Prompts for discussion:

• do records refer to national curriculum statutory requirements, especially achievement in relation to level descriptions?
• do records refer to specific historical content and pieces of pupils' work?
• do they provide targets for improvement as well as reflect achievement?
• what might secondary teachers want or need to know, in addition, about pupils' history achievements, so that they can build on previous work?

(ii) (Small mixed primary/secondary groups) develop a common record format for year 6. Criteria for consideration: how can history records best be made accessible, meaningful, reliable, relevant and useful for year 7 teachers?

Follow-up

Draft record formats to be shared with senior management within schools, modified and piloted by the primary schools.

Activity 6

Audience

Key stages 2 and 3 teachers of history.

Purpose

(i) To compare pupils' work to identify progression in historical knowledge, skills and understanding.

(ii) To help teachers review ways in which they apply their standards to the assessment of pupils' work.

Activity:

Use the paired case study examples of pupils' assessed work provided in Section 4. For example, Matthew's (key stage 2) and Tristan's (key stage 3) work

(Alternatively, teachers could bring examples of work from their own pupils).

Prompts for discussion:

• in what way are the pieces of work similar?
• how are the two tasks different in the demands they make?
• how does Matthew's work show what is expected at the end of key stage 2?
• how does Tristan's work show what is expected at the end of key stage 3?
• use the two pieces of work to identify the characteristics of progression between year 6 and 9.

Follow-up

Check that opportunities for progression with these characteristics are built into topic/enquiry planning.

Activity 7

Audience

key stage 3 teachers of history.

Purpose

to review ways in which differentiation can best be achieved in year 7

Activity:

(i) Using the current programmes of study taught to year 7, ask teachers to provide a number of specific examples of ways they differentiate their teaching to cope with the full range of pupil abilities. Record these on cards.

(ii) Group these ways into categories showing the range of approaches to differentiation. These could include differentiation by:

• outcome (all pupils do the same task but respond at different levels)
• group/individual (separate tasks for different groups/individuals)
• source or resource material (similar task or problem but different sources are used (for example, a photograph, a newspaper article)
• teacher support
• extra time to complete work.

(iii) Discuss the circumstances when each of the ways is used to determine if some of them are more appropriate for:

• certain pupils
• particular content /activities.

(iv) How might the effectiveness of these approaches be evaluated?

Using the available resources for the year 7 programmes of study, devise further activities which cover a full range of approaches to differentiation.

Follow up

pursue the objective of obtaining assessment evidence from feeder primary schools, which will allow staff to begin differentiation from the beginning of year 7.