Talking enquiries and sharing resources

At our recent YorkClio network meeting we spent our time talking about enquiries. Colleagues brought enquiries they wanted to improve and enquiries they felt were working. It was both useful and invigorating to put the YorkClio hive mind to work. We couldn’t record the discussions, but we are sharing a couple of the resources here.

The Crusades was a key topic. What do we want students to learn at Key Stage 3 in a few lessons about the Crusades? How does this learning ‘fit’ into the overall history curriculum? There was a consensus that the consequences of the Crusades are important to teach. Here is a resource from Ben Longworth that can be used as a basis to make cards on this: Crusade Consequences. Colleagues with lots of experience of teaching this topic stressed to us all the importance of doing much work with students to ensure security with the geography, the chronology and the key players.

Another key concern is how to bridge the gaps to build coherent narrative. This is the topic of an article by Natalie Kesterton in September 2019’s Teaching History. She shared with us how she uses bridging narratives in lessons between topics and one is given here: What should we remember 1348-1509 DIFF