Teachmeet History #tmhi

Live from Chelmsford, Teachmeet History #tmhi

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Yeah this is kind of funny she he’s I’m the same I always have like an obsession each year interest very Tred and was like writing things I’ve also done copyrighting before so I kind of basically got into No reun second yesterday which reminded me minister and the they also did a ref marriage it went through it was like such a vicious like why AC years Aw must vote no B okay ladies and gentlemen let get started I do apologize for being so late we’ve had um few changes to the program as you can see okay so thank you so much for coming on a cold October morning at least it’s not raining which is better

Than yesterday as I was traing down okay um if you no I I apologize okay so my name is I am posting today I am starting to work with teacher me team in regards to history and today we got a fantastic lineup of some history teachers some academic historians all talking about

What they’re do which ab brilliant I’m just confirming with my colleagues that I think is all fantastic okay as you can see there is a slight change of our program unfortunately F has not here today um and so we are going to be doing a few changes to that

Program as it goes through there was going to be breaks a little bit earlier um lunch tea and so on will be tea coffee will be at the back we have got our lovely sponsors who are all around and please go speak them they will to

Speak to us at some point during the day and right now what I’m going to do is I’m going to introduce our first teach meet this is Emily Emily is fantastic storian uh works up in L nearby me okay she is um looking at particularly today in regards to

Retrieval practice within P four classroom which is a big thing I know especially within my school and among other schools she is leading on CPD throughout her school and her Department okay and has been helping to rewrite the entire curriculum with particular focus on the practice so Emily you like to

Good morning so as as CL said I’m going to talk to you a little bit about reteval practice this morning and kind of where um our journey in terms of mine and then through into my department and then into W school so I I am a history

Teacher but I am also research and development lead at my school is a position I’ve got quite recently I can say it all started actually from retrieval practice so retrieval practice is something that absolutely transformed my teaching I was on the turn leave in 2018 and 2019 and through those lovely

People but feature track giving us all those free John cat vouches and pretty sure people have benefited from these I chose um Kate Jones’s love to teach book and this was very much my Gateway into teaching and learning it has transformed the way that I teach it has transformed

My kind of career prospects and it was the thing that made me go from let’s just be a history teacher to actually I am passionate about teaching learning developing my own and other people’s practice um and it was very important it was really important for be this this

Bit because it’s still continuing to have impacts on how we use our procur and so I thought it would be a good place to start to talk about reteval practice I’m sure we all know what it is but it’s that element of uh recalling information to mind so it enhances our

Learning it’s forcing us to pull out of our knowledge and essentially if we’re doing effortful retriev then we are strengthening the knowledge that we have and then is going to be more fully embedded in our mind and that’s really important because if we take these two quotations which I’m sure

Most of us are familiar with however controversial they may be in some circles about what learning actually is this essentially is telling us that not only is what we pick to teach important our choice of knowledge that aspect of knowledge curriculum and our choice of knowledge is really important but I

Would argue that actually then the retrieval practice is just as important if we are choosing what we want our students to know what we think the core knowledge is that they need to know then unless we’re deliberately planning in opportunities for them to recall that multiple times that learning is lost

It’s a very natural part of our brains to forget things and so we need to be doing things that are enabling students to be more successful and more likely to remember them we can pick all the lovely knowledge like if they’re not coming back to it then they are not going to

Know that so I would argue that that is essentially the most important part it is as important as our curriculum choices where are we putting our retrieval in there and this is kind of where it began with a very basic it’s very different um it’s a really nice full circle today

Because the first time I presented to staff in my school was about retrieval practice after I came back from maternity leave in 2019 and this is the first time I’ve spoken to a group of people outside of my school so it’s quite a nice circular um Journey

Essentially and you can see it was very much focused on retrieval strategies I did of course talk about eing house and help the forgetting curve and all of the theory behind it as well it was very much about showing my staff where what it was and how we could use it and what

Were those things that they were already doing in lesson and making them be more deliberate in the practice that they were doing what I’m really pleased to say is that from this point all of these retrieval strategies we’ve then gone on to look a lot more at the theory behind

It during those coid years we had remote um CPD on this to develop our practice and actually it’s now totally embedded to the point where students in our school if you go and speak to them will tell you oh yeah we do retrieval practice here because we’re very

Explicit about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it so it’s been a really it’s been a long journey but it’s been really really interesting so where did I start with this in terms of my own practice it was very much about let’s just use it in my own

Lessons let’s try it in that and then from then on we’ve gone on to do and embed it within my department as well so in practice I’m going to start with key stage three and then move through to my key stage four preco we sat down as a

Department and decided what the most important knowledge was that we had so we decided what the most important knowledge was that we needed to teach and I’m coming from a department where when I joined we had a lovely g through British history from 1066 to the Cold

War from keystage three looking at from year seven to year n looking at almost every king and queen that there has existed it was really really traditional when I turned up they handed me an exercise book that’s aulum right so it was a very traditional history department when we started and so

Actually even the concept person about stuff of going okay let’s think about what the most important things are that we need to talk about was quite different and this came out of the fact that we’ve been asked to make sure that our assessments through at key stage

Three weren’t just about the topic that they had just done but were recalling information from throughout so actually by identifying by identifying just our list of knowledge that we thought was really important it meant that that was what we focused on in our assessments which meant that that was what we then focused

On in our teaching as well so it was about emphasizing those two things and then from there in kind of last year I’ve been on another ATT leave since then so when I was on antiv leave in 2021 onwards we then created these sheets so first all was we needed to be

Really clear about what we were doing with this whole Co break and then when we came back we started to think about well we need to tell kids we need to be really explicit with our students about what they needed to know so we created these sheets that we put in their books

And we introduced this kind of from the end of Key Stage from the end of year seven so about turn three of year seven and it’s basically a list of key question questions ansers so for year seven we talk about ruling classes we talk about actually why was 1066

Significant what is a monarchy what happens when a King dies lots of them are always very confused about that at the beginning of the year and obviously that has a lot of lot to do about British history that who dies in all of the arguments say who is going to be

King and this then is used for them to retrieve their key stage three assessments because this is the knowledge that we tell them will be on their key stage to the assessments that core knowledge that they will need to be successful in our history curriculum and further and the things that we think

Actually help them understand our history and gender so the things that are going to make them know somebody who can go out and talk about these different things and we are now formalizing our retrieval in this sense as well so we’ve now embedded we’ve done a lot of curriculum designs what we’ve

Now done is we’ve now embedded um something called nothing new just review which was and I think it was Daren Les wrote A Blog about it we have nothing new just review lessons within it where we focus on retrieval and we explicitly teach look of quiz check as a revision

Technique and it is based on actually what are the misconceptions that are coming with what’s the core knowledge from this half term that they need to know and those lessons feed directly into the knowledge that we have identified as being really important and then we have these for year for year

Eight and year nine as well so everybody is really clear about what it is that is the most important aspect and that’s that is ongoing the the embedding of it and then nothing you just review new parts that ccul that we are trying to make it really explicit

And then I looked at year 10 history and I’m sure like most of you we have this perennial problem whether we have a key a two or threee key stage four we teach something at the beginning of that period and quite often were then like well the next time they’re examined on

It is in June and this was the case that we found for um Germany we were teaching at September to December and then it was June before we started kind of talking to them about revising that knowledge and so one of the things that I did was

I looked at creating so like what what is the solution to this here’s our problem what’s the solution haven’t got huge amounts of lesson time we’re on 350 minutes leak for save for so there’s not huge amounts of lesson time so instead what we what I created and this is very

Much Tak I think it’s hell night cre this originally and aund tasks shoot so s with your 10 at the end of their at the end of the Germany one so right you’ve got this sheet now I want you to do two or three tasks from this each

Week you need to color code them depending on which of the four aspects of the Germany course we’ve done and then I’m going to check them then if I’ve not if you’ve not done that I’m sure like just listening to me it’s unwieldy checking it was unwieldy

Cognitive load was too much for the students it was really difficult for them so instead what we then moved on to doing and this is last year that that’s not working we need to amend this and there’s this brilliant um resource that some created for Germany that’s got all

Of the content and then it has exam practice on it and I have amended it as well but I couldn’t find the original author of this well so he said so in January of last year well this year gave this to my year 10 said right one page a

Week and every Friday I’m going to test you on that content not all of the 15 questions but you will be tested on this content in a 10- minute quick quiz at the beginning of our lessons and that’s what we did and that became fully embedded and then really Geekly I then

Had a spreadsheet that was like what were those 10 questions kind of w to them as to which ones they had the most misconceptions about to try to develop a culture of error as well so it was rather than how many did you get right

How many did you get run tell me why you didn’t sign that one let’s them pick that together so they got really confident about going yeah I got like three run this week Miss and I don’t really understand what this was or why this happened and so it meant actually

They were quite open about their misconceptions and then I could plan on that spreadsheet to come back to that two or three weeks later that question because they built up over time so that actually we then revisiting that knowledge again so again identifying that knowledge and then using spacing

And Inter leing to make sure that we could actually retrieve it again and see if those misconceptions have been addressed and it was a really powerful way of doing it so because I’ve taken that group through um I’ve now got a retrieval pack for gcsc now I made this

In CO as well have loads of time so I teach warfare three times I don’t if anybody else in this does but yeah so there is nothing out there for warfare three times so as well as the ones that I amended for Germany and Anglo Saxon

And what is our other unit Germany and the main ones to do Cold War but that’s not India um I made an entire set of wants for Warfare through time for these as well and these cycle through so they start in this year we started at the end

Of the attemp and it’ll go Germany Anglo-Saxon Warfare Germany Anglo-Saxon Warfare but all very specific part of the course and this takes us from September all the way up to May half turn and this is their homework for the year now I’ve been using this on and off

Since um September 2020 and this is the first year that I’ve really thought that it absolutely works and this is because I have got that culture of era already embedded and because those routines are always in place so they work through this each week now the group I’ve got at

The minute not very motivated outside of school so what I’ve done is I’ve dedicated one of my precious 50 minute lessons a week to entirely do revision and what we do in that is we well we do keyword Bingo to start off with because we’ve got a whole Bingo leag thing going

On to try and get them to come to lesson on time all of that but then we do a knowledge quiz based on what they should have done for their homework the previous week we then look at content the week coming so they see this content in the lesson week before in their

Homework over that week and then they’re tested on it the following week and again these are cumulative so it isn’t a case of well it’s only going to be J the first Germany one it will be from all of them that have gone through picking up

Different things a lot of can you define this keyword and then we talk about them again so again it’s building up over time so from September through to may they will have Revisited everything that they have done in year 10 because we managed to get through three of our or

Three of our four topics in year 10 and they will revisit every single one so it’s really full on but what I’m finding is that their retrieval is much better it encourages the habits of rision and the habits of retrieval so essentially what I would say is my key takeaways

From this are very much about first of all know what you is you want to teach specifying know which I’m sure we all out then it’s about planning your retrieval keystage three and keystage four where are your retrieval opportunities coming in are they formal whole lesson things or are you using

Like just the beginning of lessons can you use your homework and that would be my other thing use your homework for retrieval work really well and build your routines so that that is going to be as effective as possible in your license so hopefully you found these I’m

Willing to share anything particular if you do Warfare please ask but if you want to see any of my resources I’m very will to sh that you can find me on on Twitter see around all day today but thank you very much I found it useful thank you Emily for that I know

Has been my school it’s not everyone else’s school um okay so um our next person coming up will be anen and just check are you doing it after yes okay that’s f our next person coming up is Erin okay Erin is looking at that lovely aspect of

Local history and how to try that in particularly looking at um in regards to the SL yes that’s okay um just very quickly while just getting sorted out and ready to speak just to remind you all we are obviously live on Twitter and things like that so

If you are twitting about or tweeting whatever we’re doing hasht HTMI is that correct HTMI TM TMI sorry it’s my first time doing this so TMI please make sure you tag us into all that um oh yes raffle Sor okay we do have a raffle going on if

You are interested in that raffle There is five tickets for one pound we’ve got some fantastic resources there some books going on there if you ask any of the staff members going around we will help you get those tiets okay great we be coming up shortly after

All these teach meets please make sure you go speak to our um sponsors they are all of our R room and without them quite frankly we will not be able to do these as cheaply um and as easily as we are doing them right now they support us a

Hell of a lot so please go twet to them find out about stuff um I know had the course um earlier this week and it was absolutely fantastic Collins and OU uh publishing has got some fantastic resources coming out recently okay morning everybody my name is

Williams and I’m talk to a bit about any that we’ve done on Empire but with a local Focus um so our Conta our school was in Kingston in Sur um over the course of the last um three years or so we’re in the last phase driving the last phase of

The Year n reforms to our Q3 curriculum this year um and K Pon as of you probably know has local connection to aan the Anglo Saxon King be firstland coronation St g h so as part of my original uh research for a new applean inquiry um for for the year

Seven seven curriculum I went down to Kingston’s local church here All Saints and it was some of the exhibits relating to’s life ining see version of the crown that he was he was likely to have W it was as I was exiting the the church um dat is perhaps quite important

Because of the context in the politics at the time as I was exiting the church um I my was drawn to this small A4 uh noce attached to the wall hly attached to the wall um which obviously black lives Master which was at its height in the summer of 2020 and it says

That on the wall above is a memorial to Charles Nicholas Palmer NB foror who owned an estate in Jamaica and was a spokesman for Planter’s interest in the 1820s there’s high on the on the wall the the East entrance um is is back here to Charles Nicholas palman Esquire late of the island

Jamaica and so this this got my interest going goog this this this might interesting maybe not the year seven but uh it could certainly find a place as we we move through our e form uh I found a little pamplet the church had produced called echo of slavery uh and found out

That Charles parner lived locally here at a country H called noron place noron just to the just to the east of of Kingston PS and so uh intrigued I delve deeper and learned bit more about Charles Palmer mentioned he’s a Jama grew up in Born Jamaica and his family were slave

Owners plantation owners on the island um but to return to England and uh won a seat in kingst uh he was Pro of La of Liverpool and he did a lot of U work in the town building Bridge across the TS relating that um and but what

Really um surprised me and sold the story of nor place te is that just a few years before Charles pal took over the building uh bring both in here um this one here in the center Caesar pikon lived at nor place Caesar pton was a sagales boy six-year-old kidnapped um

From Africa by a mysterious Captain power and gifted to the man there on the left s John Phillips who was also an NP not for Kingston South Wales but he had lived at noron place um as a sort of you know home from home whil he was in

London on his political business and so p been gifted to John Phillips and uh John Phillips have raised him and then after died his wife continued to um and Caesar Pon would go on to receive money in the will from Mrs Phillips and establish a successful called coal trading business on

Attemp so um this you know seemed like just an incredible story all centered you know in a local uh local home I have to go out and try and find out where Nory place was and so um this this one in a million chance to Across the story like

This but not for long because because now so the field chip but it was just a stone throw from our school you can see our school on the left there and the 150 me away of the road so immediately we could start by saying the yeah um and the interesting thing about

The story of nor in place of course is that it builds a bit of a gap in the stories that we tell about Empire um so of course slavery transatlantic slavery is a global story and I’m sure told the story of trade and we had done so under our

Even under our old curriculum um and of course there’s the national story of Britain’s you know important place in abolishing slavery but where the local stories certainly AR missing so nor place feels you know that perfect s things like perfectly um the next question was the

Question what are we going to do with this with this story so there are lots of different and aspects of of slavery of Empire that we could have could have looked at so obviously the triangle of trade through Palmer place as a as a Jamaican Plantation owner um picton’s

Life in London as an African man London is an original Center the British slave trade before Liverpool and Bristol took over uh Palmer uh a ro refurbishing p in place uh interesting aspect about Palmer is that he went completely bankrupt in the course of spending money in order to

Become an MP and then to try to preserve the rights of the Privileges of the the plantation owners and he ended up fleeing to France in disgrace and costs involved there was to keep up appearances and completely refurbish nors in place into this this picture comes from a catalog of of Grand Homes

Of Sur which was put together in the 19th century that was mainly because har uh expensive Renovations um treat of enslave people in Britain uh the existence and similation of free blood people in Britain was victim although he began life essentially as K boy as slave

Into into a world that he didn’t know he was was raised well and treated well by the stand of the day by Phillips and eventually was was a free man established as as a local businessman the only abolitionists like Philips not quite sure what Philips is use worldwide

Picked him so well it’s probably because of his religion um and then the abolition compensation that story as possible to tell par is one of the leaders in par parliament of the uh of the r to try to get compensation when abolition came of course we couldn’t ignore the

Fact that you this story centers on on one building and so um the putting nor in place at the center of the story was was crucial so ended up settling on this first question what did the sa tra means the occup of in place with the the different

Opinions men would have had in relation to that Trend so it’s a similarity difference inquiry um three main lessons after introduction to the slave trade in particular passing it as the first one focused on Phillips this person by person in which the main Drive was to think about whether Philips was really a

Supporter of slaver or not um he was part a fervent Methodist but also he had family connections to S plantations there is nothing from Phillips in the source record that explicitly States his opinions on so there’s a lot of inference involed here next we looked at Pon himself and

Part of this lesson was to compare him to the wider community of Africans living in London at the time um which was want to you show the diversity of of people living in in London at the time from with African ancestry he wasn’t involved in the abolition campaign as

Much as we know um unlike eano but he was wealthy and prosperous unlike the Begger Joe Johnson and John East was another example of an African living in England at that time comparing them to Caesar PCT ask students to think how similar they were so it’s pre-practice for and task on similarity

And difference finally why did Charles Palmer run out of money we looked at the refurbishments of nor in place but we also looked at the impact upon the slave trade and Plantation businesses from uh from revolts and Revolutions in the Caribbean so the ins is very very simple

Um an example paragraph but the students filled in two subsequent paragraphs making direct comparisons between p and Par and Phillips and um so that that was the end of the inquiry um they they enjoyed it l Sur and try see how our our was Landing U but they they seem to

Enjoy it um in terms of our Reflections on the quiry um you know student reaction the work they produced was very good adding curriculum depth to Empire was a great benefit of this inquiry we like to do some more local research using the archives in Kingston um and

There is a recognition directly opposite as there’s another building that is recognized nor the hall which is quite confusing when you’re doing research in place so we might like to start campaign to try to get in place recognized and lastly if you’re interested in doing um something similar

To this then I’d recommend the website L Heritage which has a list of almost 2,000 uh Country Homes homes that no longer resist in place and may well all like good have a strong connection to Empire and safety soing you that’s it thanks for [Applause] listening hi everybody just very quickly

From me we just wanted to give you a bit kind of heads up in terms of what’s changed in terms of the schedule just so you know unfortunately Fern has spoken to us this morning she’s really not very well so she is now currently in her bed

Feeling very Sor herself and not very well but she has promised us that the next time you have a teach meet hopefully she’ll be able to make it so unfortunately she’s not a very well person so we send our best wishes to her and we hope that she gets well soon it

Doesn’t mean that we’re slightly tweaking things and moving things around so the uh lovely hand out you have unfortunately now is a work fiction I’m sorry um so just bear with us as we kind of work through how we’re going to change things so when we go oh extra

Break got how exciting I speak to someone brilliant so we just try and um make it the best that we possibly can in terms of M things around so bear with us but as you know teachers we think on our feet and we’ll make it work so thank you

And all you speakers can you stand here as well please I’m reliably informed by Mr W otherwise you can’t hear you here I’m very loud you can hear me anyway but on stream and you stand here that be marvelous thank you okay right so we have our next speaker our next is

Amanda okay so Amanda’s coming up and get all sorted okay Amanda is a teacher of very large comprehensive school and has been teaching for quite a while uh has worked in international schools has been had history eat and so on and she is Curr going to be talking to us about

Creting as aspect of theological coherence at keystage three which I know it so I’m very interested to about this thank you hello and sorry I’m just mesmerized by how aush I made my pH and so I’m talking really about what has become a labor of love really over

13 years of teaching and leading history so I apologize if this kind of becomes a long story of I suppose the challenging I feel I faced and how I’ve tried to overcome them i’ love to say I have all the solutions for youday but is very much still a work in

Progress so obviously we starting with our national curriculum now it’s quite frightening really that for a long time I assumed that because I was teaching things in a certain order that by default and osmosis my students would have chronological understanding it’s very clear that unfortunately that was a

Complete myth because I still had some of these classic lines coming out in my lessons back then a long while ago you will recognize these she smiling a while back in the olden days so what did that tell me well clearly students saw the past as a homogeneous Mass there was no

Sense of period or sequencing any interconnections so what could I do to overcome that now I believe very strongly that chronology is our driving mechanism so you think about the concept you’re teaching whether it’s change continuity similarity difference causation none of those can effectively take their place without our chronology

Being incredibly strong so this is really a reflection of the previous school that I worked in for seven years a l comprehensive and the new school that I just moved to which is through school so actually now I’m thinking about the curriculum right through early

Years right to the end of year 11 so first off where I started really was our unit planning now how could I use unit planning to facilitate chronological understanding every single unit will now start with what we call our context lesson now I understand some of you may

Be sat there going oh my goodness me I don’t have much time at P stage three but actually I’ve come from a school where our keystage three time was very very short but this really helped build our confidence of our historians in chronology so our context lesson would

Always include a timeline which I’ll show you an example of in a second a unit linking activity and again I’ll show you an example and something new I’ve just introduced is a sense of period linking to what Owen said about loal history so this is a very very very

Very basic timeline that was provided to year seven so as you can see we started with the classic medieval England and then we compared it to Medieval Maly now I’m a true medievalist I quite happily indulge medieval history all of year seven but for a long time it was herey

Timeline and we’ll forget about the rest of the unit we looked out in Lon one thank you very much but actually what we’ve realized is that by making this a living and breeding document in our units we constantly come back to it students now have a lot more confidence

Now this is the year seventh so you can see what they’ve done is they’ve annotated additional events some of these at the bottom are from Home Learning so they’ve added a Silk Roads timeline to their um timeline additionally it has opened a can of worms we looked at the amazing book by

Ian Mortimer medieval Horizons who argues the medieval time period did not end at Bosworth actually it stets to 1600 the controversy that that open in the room was amazing so somebody’s idea that chronology is not neat it’s messy and actually we don’t wake up one day and it’s the Industrial Revolution this

Timeline has enabled that that actually it’s not as neat as we might have first imagine so that timeline is referred back to all time plus at the end of the unit there’s the classic right there’s your timeline talking they have to speak the person next to you and talk The

Narrative what happen happened why did it happen then how do that link to what’s happening in Mary do they link is it separate and we are a voice 21 school so that has enabled also the development of oracy in our P now I shared this about two years ago on Twitter I got

Very excited when I got over a 100 likes like right liveing the dream and so this is a worksheet that leads together every unit that we do so in our first lesson there’ll be a worksheet like this driven by his choreography that shows how our previous unit links to our next unit

This is one of my favorites and I’ve come from a school in Huddersfield in Yorkshire the Industrial Revolution essentially made our town this David Ola explaining how the slave trade that we did in unit two enables the Industrial Revolution so again students do not see chronology as these neat little boxes

Once you finish one unit I can forget about it it is actually empowering the other units that you then have uh they are on Twitter I will reshare them there is one for every unit um that we do now I’m very lucky and the new school that

I’ve now moved to has probably one of the richest histories of a building in our local area and this is actually our school it was an Army Barracks uh that is troops returning from South Africa in 1902 we also are on a street called jibit street so you can imagine some of

The controversial things that happen happen down our street now this is new that we’ve just introduced in our context lesson every single first letter of the unit at the end of lesson is the question well what does this time period look like on jibit street so it’s that

Idea of that local history that okay well it looks like this in London it looks like this out in Africa but what does that look like that time period on jibit street and that is then our point of comp how does our local history change as we go through our chronology now obviously

Inevitably with local history as Owen just said this requires a lot of effort and research it’s very much a work in progress but that allows you to add that learning you’ve got about local National and Global scales now during the unit we will always have what we call the narrative

Lesson now I’m a big lover of stories and this is a really important lesson for me where we use the story of one person one individual that really strengthens the chronological understanding also allows us to introduce these diverse stories so for example when we do the English Civil War

H we base it around that amazing Source the world upside down but we stop after about lesson five and we say right let’s look at a story what does this look like from a personal point of view uh I’m a big lover of getting as much

Women into history as possible um so we went with jadee Harwood who’s a royal spy so the piece of work sh did is a living graph but it’s linked to the events they’ve already studied so at the bottom are the events they have looked like looked at in the Engish Civil War

But is then J speak and then compared to the story of Jan Warwood what is she doing at that point in time and it’s this idea of this personal story alongside our chronology now this is again something that is new um in my new school which is what I’m calling the bigger picture

Questions now these are not unit questions these are questions for the whole year that we constantly come back to now the actual wording of the questions is still a work in progress but this is I’m using some classes with my be pinks so for year seven we’ve gone

With the Middle Ages a time of stagnation upheaval year eight we’ve got the early modern period a time of chaos and Revolution and then year nine the 20th century a century dominated by struggle and conflict now I love a prediction so the work that you can see

On the board is my year n and I literally gave him that question tell them what you think you can’t be wrong tell me do you think the 20th century is really a time of struggle and conflict and then we go on the journey and we

Decide at the end whether this is true now obviously this is going to be there are aspects of that but however there isn’t it’s constant bigger picty question to help build our chronology now finally without doubt my favorite activity so obviously we have some lovely interpretations of time periods

Available to us Horrible Histories we’ve got series by Aon wils there one of my favorite tasks at the end of year seven eight to n is we get these interpretations out so say measly Middle Ages we have Invasion plague and murder and students have a good debate is that

An accurate representation of the time period that you have just studied this gets very Lively okay and even to the point where then students you create your interpretation then it’s not the med the Middle Ages what is it okay and honestly they have a great time with

That so it’s really just trying to think about how you can bring chronology from the background to the Forefront of your ccul thank you very [Applause] much than that and that was really interesting I’m a lot of points on that like have from most of our speak today

Um and as she said o press is here he one of our sponsors along with Collins p and time travel I think I’ve said that one right okay our next person to speak is Jacob so as Jacob’s getting himself all sorted here okay J has wrot many many

Things uh for teaching history and so on and today he’s looking at the idea of uh what does it mean to them the idea of giving that personal perspective to um history am I correct yes yeah great fantastic so I’m just got a see if I can keep it 10 minutes

Watch right um hello everyone there I am uh so today I’m going to talk to you about people in the past specifically how they saw themselves and their world because I’m going to sort of do a SL provocation today and I’m going to suggest that maybe we don’t talk about

This or teach about this quite as often as maybe we should but I think there’s a good reason for that because it’s an incredibly difficult thing to do and it’s a very very difficult thing to do well so my talk is about what did it mean to them what matters to people in

The past how can we understood understand what matter so I’m going to start off with a very badly designed slide with lots of words I put it here so read it to you in 1996 teacher educator Chris husbands distinguish between history from the outside and history from on the inside the former

Husbands argued involves the abstract analysis of political events and social structures whereas the latter seeks to reconstruct the ways in which people in the past need and thought history from the outside history from the inside now hudband goes on to argue that within history of school subjects people’s often only encounter questions

Of big structural issues EG what caused the first world war or how much did the Norman Conquest change England it’s much rarer to do what Mar Ruben argues many historians do now which is to ask different questions they asked not only how it really was but

Rather how was it for him or her or them now on the train over i b props um on the train over I did some research um this is a really good book hand you read this yeah it’s good stuff isn’t it right so in that book about half of the

Chapters are historians talking somewhere or another about the ideas of people in the past not big structural questions such as causation or change but rather small question about how individuals or groups saw themselves so to put it really simply we break this down we’ve got two kinds of History

We’ve got history from the outside history that is more focused on structures and then we’ got history from the inside which is history that’s more focused on people and what M to people we teach a lot of history from the outside and there’s good reasons for that it’s a really important kind of

Historical analysis but it’s perhaps rarer to see in school history history from the inside history that’s focused on people’s ideas people’s subjective perspectives my takeaway today is that I think we should teach more about what I’m calling inst perspective which is about how people in the past saw

Themselves in their world I’ll put a little definition on the next slide so historical perspective is about how we teach pupil how historians use evidence to reconstruct perspectives of people in the past um sorry about the image it’s a bit horrible actually I but um one of

One of my favorite examples of this is there’s an article by historian Robert D called The Great Cat Massacre it’s a really famous piece was written in the 80s and what D does in that is he takes a really horrible incident which is a Lo of fr apprentices in the 1800s murder of

Cats and to us that just seemed abhorent and cruel and ridiculous know why would these people do such a sadistic thing but what D does is by looking at the evidence from the time trying to understand what the cat symbolized to those people in their perspective what he realized was the cat

Became a kind of symbol almost like an allegory for the owner of the workshop where the apprentices worked and they came to sort of symbolize something to them I.E they meant something to people in the past it’s very different to what it means to us now I’m going to finish this talk by

Just focusing on a really conrete example of what I think this can look like in the classroom uh this is an inquiry question that I’ve spent uh quite a long time developing I’ve been sort of teaching it and like tweaking it for quite a few years and um I think it

Works really well and I think it’s a really good way of teaching people about what people in the past thought about what matters to people in the past so the question is what what did the chartist want to change now if you don’t know the chartist are a group of sort of

19th century Working Class People who wanted to push for more radical political reforms votes for all men Parliament every year secret ballot all kinds of things that we would probably now see as pretty normal and to start off with this question seems well obvious because the chartist literally wrote a program at

The start of their movement in 1838 39 explicitly saying what they wanted to change they wanted the point of the people’s Charter so what a Sil question but actually the more you look at this movement the more you look at the sources from these people and when you

Look at the chartist themselves you realize this question is actually really interesting because if we look at the chartist leaders they didn’t agree on what they wanted to change they saw their world they saw the problems in 19 century Britain all very differently for some like the sort of bookish uh

Cornishman William love he wanted to basically spend all his time writing pamphlets he didn’t like other people very much um he wanted to use moral CA as he called it to affect political changes whereas the extravagant Irish Aristocrat F say Connor took a very different approach he loved sort of tub

Something big rallies monster meetings they Rec called stirring up the masses in the north of England to sort of push for change they Wen roughly the same thing they want all this stuff but the way they want to secure it is very different the dates Wrong by the way it’s a

Deliberate mistake um in in 1839 there was a think of the Newport rising in Wales where another chartist John Frost took things much further he led people in the sort of valleys around Newport past the glast furnaces and coal mines and they armed themselves with pipes made in secret caves and muskets

And Hammers and bits of metal and they marched on the City of Newport to free political prison these were not reformers like for them these in many ways were revolutionaries this probably in some ways the closest 19th century England comes 19th cury Britain comes to a

Revolution what did the CH is want to change well as it been year clearly this question is more complicated the more we look at the chances now after all this business all these people love Conor John Frost they’ll get put in prison and charg them

To seeps seeps away a it rises back up petitions rejected again seeps away and then very strange things start happening what the chartists want to change changes so Ferguson Connor the far Grand Irish Aristocrat becomes obsessed with agrarian reform and he found a conille which is a small estate where the idea

Was you’d take people out of the cities where they’re miserable and you put them on farms and they would become small holders now it didn’t work it actually turned out to be very ju potentially a scam it all ended very badly went mad laston di but before all that happened

Clearly OK Conor what he wants the movement to change what chartism means to him has changed so really simply then for here eight this is something they can do this is something they can write about really well they can understand this group of people who have saw the world very differently

To us the artists through these stories things like no conille things like the newort rising through looking at really interesting sources like the people’s CH they can understand that people in the past thought about themselves and thought about their world in interesting and complicated ways so in

Short gets teach lots of history from the outside it’s really good stuff you know teach about the causes of the first world war teach about how much the noress change but I think there are maybe more opportunities than we currently make the most of to teach history from the inside to teach about

The perspectives of people from the past that actually very quick in the interest of speed I’ll leave it there but thanks [Applause] everyone thank for that um I think we all appreciate sometimes be a little bit quick um we are going to go for break and you’ll be very grateful to know that

Break is 20 minutes for you while you are on break please remember to someing call it and make sure t m get sorry that Pap also we will not able to do events like this but minutes Okay and then I’ll thank You I want day yeah I I’m driving two and half yeah yeah a some I lot you are now going to be you your fault completely your fault I here saw everyone else ready to go i’t seen that yeah yeah la I’m losing my voice that’s the problem like two o lowers yeah it

Works oh my that’s so funny so no e test test test E test test test test test I e about five minutes showing off my book knowledge on you be that one for E Spe e You want to out I mean all like that okay we can start S down we can start sit downen down sorry I was doing the teacher settle down children do apologize thank you one thing I’ve Never Been Told right they getting of you lot okay thank you for that um thank you for

That I hope you had a very good restful break you managed to get around to have a look at some of the stuff I know Tina has been around with the raffle okay with some of our fabulous um prizes that we’ve got on there some fabulous books chocolate and some stationary and things

Like that we all a little bit in our teacher life like our stationary we have got our first sponsor coming up to talk to us um this is Laura who is from Collins um who is over there as I said without our sponsors we would not

Actually be able to do a lot of the stuff with the teach meets okay and I’m not just talking about history but we know this the whole network and without sponsors such as Collins we will not be able to do this as successfully as we do

Do them so I’m going to hand it over to to Laura to have a little talk right hi everyone sorry for my slightly losing my uh voice at the end of half term Vibes I um was actually the author of one of the co-authors on the new series of the

Collins uh Global textbooks which some of you might have had a chance to to look at now so I teach um Classics history and politics at Emanual School in London um and yeah so these are like um you might have be aware of these knowing history series um from several

Years ago I think the first editions came out in 2016 um but last year um I was involved in uh re like uh expanding these to uh include global history for kind of the first time and some of these units that are in these books are types

Of history that are not often available to be able to be studied kind of completely as units in their own right so things like Edo Japan the Ottomans um Aztecs uh birth of the USA and this kind of thing for at keystage three level sometimes in in in some GCSE courses but

Not so much at Key stage3 um so what I wanted to talk to you about was how because we’re actually using these books in my classrooms I never told the kids that I’m the author of them I wait for them to work that out um and see uh the

Kind of like challenges and opportunities I think teaching global history has uh like gives to you because I think that we we have definitely found challenges with with introducing it so first of all like myths and controversies I think with some of these um Global stories some of them are uh

Involved dominant narratives which some of us are quite um familiar with for example things like uh prevalence of human sacrifice in the Aztec World um or the idea that Great Zimbabwe was not built by the shaa people for example and um not only when writing uh the textbook

And having to find source material that would would disprove those things as well that we now we know for their kind of prejudices in different time periods and I really like kind of reception based things uh with my kind of ancient history background as well um and it gives an opportunity to

Kind of try and get students thinking about how stories emerge so how those myths actually developed or why they exist um which I think is also a very valuable thing to be looking at um another thing with global history depending on the different types of units you might um choose to engage with

Is vocabulary I think that’s one of the things that sometimes uh make some uh teachers a bit worried particularly introducing such Global units at keystage three that people might be a little bit um put off by difficult um vocabulary so again thinking of the adext things like ketle T

Lanit this kind of words that maybe um students will kind of find really difficult and kind of switch off um a little bit too quickly and also obviously uh uh civilizations with non-latin scripts so in the China units or the Arabic units as well and when you’re looking at source material in

Which it’s not being translated if you want to show them the real thing of course it’s it’s going to have those non-latin scripts but I think that this gives us an opportunity to really give Justice to um those cultures by being more accurate by teaching the the students those words in their own

Languages um it makes their writing so much better as well we’ve seen like kind of the writing that they’re actually producing in our um written work much richer and sounding much more like a historian um and I think that we can um like work around this by just treating

Some of those words as key words like we would for a lots of other words um that students are coming across in all of their units anyway you know things that vocabulary and Concepts that might be familiar to us actually aren’t familiar to students sometimes so just

Introducing it as another key word for them to kind of use and deploy things like using word Banks when they when they’re when they’re doing their writing as well can really help and I think they we’ve found that they feel quite proud as well that they’ve managed to

Integrate um that kind of vocabulary into their writing too another thing is new voices we’ve heard some people talking about new voices today trying to in input I think we we all um in the room here particularly very enthusiastic history teachers in the room uh are very keen on

Making sure that we’re trying to um introduce these into particularly our keystage 3 curriculums where we have a little bit potentially more wiggle room compared to the specifications of keystage four and keystage five um part of the issue with this and this was also when writing uh the textbooks as well is

Is sometimes the lack of the source material for those new voices um or the Prejudice of the source material that exists and actually having to try and kind of work around that and think about things in a slightly different way um presentism as well a little bit um like

What Jacob was talking about but kind of wondering about how people in the past actually thought about things and are we uh putting kind of ideas that are a bit too modern potentially would they have actually felt those things at the time that can kind of sometimes become a

Little bit difficult to uh deal with and the other thing is Department resistance I think sometimes as well um I’ve actually been sometimes a little bit surprised about how much um resistance there sometimes has been to to introduce some of these uh new stories partly I think it’s just a little bit of

Um lack of knowledge sometimes on these different Global stories and hopefully these textbooks give teachers as well as students the opportunity to just learn about some other different topics that we didn’t have the chance to learn at school you know all of these things I

Didn’t do when I was at school um and most of us probably didn’t um and I think that actually like we need to move away from that idea of choosing safer options also if things feel a little bit challenging or a little controversial as as well to actually engage with that

Rather than shy away from it um and and don’t be afraid in departments to have a kind of conversation people are kind of saying that there are forms of better history or you know girls will like this type of History more than boys this kind of thing just try and challenge that and

Not let that become the kind of uh narrative that the department is uh you know following um and yeah I think that actually just introducing these new voices has actually built a really strong in arcal um new desire from the students actually to do more research so

We’ve actually set up this group called Athena Society if it’s on Instagram at Athena Society official um where we are doing research into women in different time periods um and Publishing kind of like some of the ideas and questions that are coming from that and doing kind

Of like movie reviews and taking a historical approach to why different things are being portrayed in different ways and different time periods and I think that that wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t partly been um for the way in which we’re trying to integrate this global history and new voices um into it

And in terms of World building I know these kind of words were you know critical fabulation all this the other year um you know people 50% of population was always women there’s always been people who’ve been marginalized in different time periods and actually they were there and we need

You know it’s our duty to try and um bring them back to to the four I think so that’s kind of the opportunity um in that one and uh yeah in integrating material I mean we we are only have an hour a week with our keystage three um

Which is very little um history so in a in a in a in a term that could be only five or six hours um and we found it really really hard in terms of time about choosing what if we are going to introduce this new global history how do

We navigate that so do we um you know stick to a chronological approach um but the problem with that it often means that if you’re doing a global unit the normal like a chronology that we might be more used to let’s say in medieval Britain might not actually quite coales

Sometimes and students can get a little bit lost and a little bit confused um same with geography when we kind of like moving around very quickly around lots of different places that sometimes we we worry that they get a little bit lost and in terms of worrying about the exam

Units if you’re thinking about what they might do at keystage four or keystage 5 um that you want to create like a solid foundation for them moving forward so do you really want to to a random unit on the Osman for example which might seem a

Little bit kind of off piece um but there are really good opportunities with this I think there’s so many new links that you can bring where actually students you know they’re still doing the same skills but by looking at a culture in its own right um that can

Take the story from that culture’s point of view so for example again the thinking of the Ottoman unit for example we can tell the story of the Reformation but kind of a little bit through ottoman eyes for example um and the kind of ways

In which uh yeah if you take the kind of perspective from from that rather than focusing on Henry and what’s going on in Britain and you know you can choose which story becomes the Side Story compared to what becomes the focus actually and that’s another way that you

Can kind of uh try and integrate these this this Global stuff um and there are in terms of the advanced thinking as well with the chronology whilst the timelines can be sometimes a little bit confusing for students we I came up with the idea when we were writing them to

Introduce like an interl uh timeline like an integrated timeline at the back of each of the textbooks so and if you haven’t seen that yet that we’ve found that that’s been really useful and students actually by having the textbooks have um there’s been kind of like a Grassroots movement from the from

The students themselves being like oh hang on I’ve seen that this happens in China at this time can we talk about that and actually that’s been really nice for us as teachers to be like actually yeah why don’t we talk about that for for a little bit of time as

Well um and you know if you’re worried about the kind of exam modules there are um some modules in the different courses that do reflect some of this Global content like the in Ed EXL the Spain new world which some people might be um doing but also just a wider question

About you know uh I always worry with keystage three about the students that don’t take GCSE history and what do they actually understand about the World by the end of keystage three if they choose not to take it you know what skills have they learn what do they understand about

The past um and if it is just um not very Global I do like worry about that um in terms of their knowledge of the world let’s say um so yeah just to conclude really like I I just encourage you to go have a look at the this new

Content like it’s been really exciting to write interesting to write the kids are really um enjoying it it’s really hard to choose even having written it I we we keep having arguments about what bit what bits we should focus on or not focus on um but I think they are really

Useful resource not only for students but also for teachers to just get inspired by some other different time periods So yeah thank you for your time okay thank you for that and as I said um Collins have got all their books over there so if you want to go and have

Flick through during breakdown or lunchtime please go feel free to do that our next speaker is Mike who’s on his way up uh Mike is our one of our keynote speakers today he’s a head of history in West London and a member of the secondary committee for the historical

Association okay and he is going to be talking about well how we teach words in the history classroom thank you thank you so much um is this is this on yeah okay brilliant um hello everyone um my name is Mike it’s so so lovely to be here to see so many history teachers

Coming out on a Saturday to talk about history teaching it’s always for me I find it so exciting so energizing to see how people in our community of subject teachers are so passionate about what we do um especially or even in the depths of the term my name is Mike I teach

History in West London in my spare time I’m head of history at my school as well and today I thought I would speak about teaching abstract words in the history classroom which is something that I find incredibly exciting but also really challenging and perhaps that is something that resonates with you as

Well so what do I mean by abstract nouns abstract words I’ve put some of the ideas on the boards that recur across our year seven and year eight curriculum for example big big words like a l such as Liberty Power class which Jacob spoke about this morning in history

Teachers speak we always or sometimes call these concept or these words substantive Concepts and they’re both really really important really exciting but I think also really really difficult to teach why are they important they’re important because they allow us to speak about the past to write about the past

Because they Bunch up a lot of stuff and put it in a word that we can use to make claims about the past but also to argue about it so if we want pupils to argue about whether the Industrial Revolution was a revolution they need to have a really clear understanding of what

Revolution means now they are also difficult to teach for exactly the same reason I think they’re difficult because they are by default abstractions so for example if we were Time Travelers with a time traveling machine we could go back to the 19th century but we wouldn’t be

Able to see reform we could see people arguing about reform we could see people protesting for reform we could see people passing laws but we can’t see reform as a thing and that makes these ideas so so hard to teach especially when we try to Define them what often

Happens is an absolute nightmare because in the definitions more abstract words crop up I remember teaching seven class once about the break with Rome and explaining about Henry Henry making the Church of England and a kid putting their hand up and saying but I don’t

Understand why was it such a big deal he built a church for himself couldn’t people just go to a different Church and I saidoh very good point I don’t mean church as a building I mean church as an institution and the child looked at me

Like I was some crazy person as if that was meant to explain anything at all uh so these words are really really important absolutely key but they’re also really difficult to teach and I think they are also tricky to teach for another reason which is that all words

Including abstract nouns have got two different um Dimensions to them that’s really what I want to focus on in this talk words all words have form they have shape physical shape we can sound them out we can write them down they involve sounds and letters but they also have

Meanings and they are by default more abstract and I think a way of unlocking how we can teach these words is to treat those as pedagogically different teaching the form of a word is different I think to teaching the meaning of a word and often I think we can run into

Problems when we try to teach the meaning through the same means as the form I know that sounds a bit convoluted I’ll try and explain what I mean by this so the form of a word is as I said the kind of physical shape right the sounds

The letters the mores all of that good stuff and we can teach the form of words through rehearsal essentially because they are physical we can teach them through rehearsal my favorite way of doing this is through chant chant and more chant we do loads of chanting at my

School if I walk through the halls I can hear one class shouting molecules and another class chanting the French alphabet which is forever kind of seared into my brain now um and chants are really powerful because a they’re really motivating for kids they’re really really engaging but they also give all

Pupils the chance to sound out those words and now that I work at a school where we do loads of this I realized I’ve really neglected this for a lot of my teaching in my earlier career where I um didn’t really think about when I introduce a new word are pupils using

That word are all pupils using that word in that lesson and I think if I introduce a really big word such as Empire in a lesson all pupils should have at least said that word once before they leave the classroom that lesson so chanting such as I say you say where the

Teacher says I say you say Empire and the kids go Empire or where the teacher uses a coral response where they say oh remind me what was that word one two three and the kids go Empire that is really really powerful in making sure all kids rehearse the shape of that word

They get their heads around what does the word feel like what does it look like and also the spelling as well as the sounds Emily spoke so powerfully this morning about the impact of retriever practice in her classroom I think retriever practice is absolutely key for teaching the form of words short

Quizzes little tests I think do now activities now get usort of really bad names sometimes I think they’re really really powerful for just getting P to rehearse how to spell out Colony again and again and again so the form of words therefore is more straightforward I

Think we still have to be really really thorough with teaching the form of words and be really careful about this but teaching the form of words is therefore a bit more straightforward because it’s all about rehearsal now the big problem is in my view that word meaning cannot

Be taught through rehearsal I think we can secure word meanings through rehearsal once pups have understood them but we cannot introduce word meanings through rehearsal so I want to illustrate this with a very very historical example which is this question on the boards uh the question

Is what is a dog okay I just ask you for 30 seconds on your tables what would you say to someone who doesn’t know what a dog is what is a dog dog so 30 seconds off your go okay lovely thank you all so much just bring everyone back I was just trying

To it’s hard to get people back under um I was just trying to listen into some of your definitions I heard things such as a dog is an animal with four legs with fur with Paws and so on uh which would then raise the question is this a

Dog and the answer is no it’s not a dog even though it might actually fit some of the definitions you just used others might say oh well but we did say in our definitions uh dogs are domesticated animals they live in people’s homes which would then raise the question is

This a dog on the right hand side so what we can see there I think is that teaching words through definitions is really really tricky because definitions are often not very accurate and therefore it is not always useful to try and teach pupils a word that is abstract in particular by teaching them

Definitions and drilling those definitions at least when we first introduce those words so your definitions of dog were useful to the people at your table because you all already know what a dog is they wouldn’t perhaps be so useful in teaching an alien I don’t know um who’s never seen a

Dog what a dog is so definitions are tricky and I think we can’t introduce abstract words through definitions and that’s because we don’t learn abstract words or any words through definition so none of you know what a dog is because someone gave you a definition of the dog

You learned what a dog is by people pointing to different animals saying that’s a dog over there this is a dog over here that cat over there is not a dog and so on so your idea of dog in your mind doesn’t look like a definition it probably looks more something like

This uh which is kind of classic example of of schema theory of a schema so word meanings in our heads are not organize as definitions they’re more sort of like webs of meaning and different connections that we’ve forged over time and probably your idea of dog doesn’t

Even look like this it probably looks something more like this of kind of like different dog behaviors different kinds of dogs so mental images are really really important they form the basis of many of our understandings of words and of abstract words in particular um now I’m not the first one

The only one who sort of thought about in those terms what I find really interesting is that zek freed englman who some of you might have heard of as the man who literally wrote the book on Direct instruction H talks about this as well so interestingly englman his

Background was he was a philosopher of language and he thought very very deeply about what does it mean to teach a pupil a word an abstract word and he said essentially what I just tried to point out earlier we learn what a dog is by people pointing out lots of examples of

Dog to us and non-examples as well and over time therefore Our Minds start to shape the boundaries of the concept why a dog or why a German Shepherd is a dog but a wolf isn’t a dog so this is how we learn those abstract nouns by examples and non-examples in context multiple

Times over time now what does that mean for history teaching obviously we’re not trying to teach kids what dogs are and so on we try to teach them what an Empire is a colony what Liberty meant to people in the 18th century um and people who’ve talked and thought about this in a

History teaching context are two people in particular who’ve really shaped my thinking on this one is Katherine MCG who teaches on the PGC course at the UCL Institute of Education uh and Jonathan Grant who is a former colleague of mine who teaches at AR Pioneer Academy here

In London and they’ve both both thought about this under the banner of the theory of inferentialism now that’s again sounds like such a big word in a nutshell I think what inferentialism means is teaching meanings from concrete to abstract so rather than trying to give a pupil a definition of church is

An institution or colony is a foreign settlement they suggest we should start with concrete examples concrete things that people understand already and then leading them to the abstract idea and an example I’ve brought for this is um how we now in my school introduce the idea

Or the word colony for the first first time um so this comes in the second lesson of our inquiry on the transatlantic slave trade in the first lesson the pupils learned about the role of the Portuguese Portuguese traders in West Africa and how the slave trade or the trading enslaves people started the

Second lesson then opens or starts in a colony in a Portuguese colony in sa just off the coast of um Africa and this is the text I wrote for introducing our pupils for the the first time to the word colony so it goes like this sa the island was a strange Place Amador

Raised his strong arms and hacked down at the tall grass in front of him after three strikes his blade cut through bats and parrots fluttered in the sky above small monkeys with large eyes jumped from tree to tree dark jungles covered the Island’s coure but strangely the buildings that dotted the Island’s Coast

Looked clearly European there were Grand Homes and fortresses a hospital and two churches all built from White Portuguese Stone there were Portuguese animals too donkeys ducks and sheep there were even Portuguese trees growing sweet oranges and figs the island was a strange place it was like a piece of Portugal that had

Been dropped into the African sea the island was a colony a foreign settlement in distant lands so again if I could ask you quickly to talk at your tables what things can you pick out what abstract idea did I try to put in there and what concrete examples I use to lead pupils

To those abstract ideas again if we could take 40 seconds for that at your tables thank you J okay lovely thank you so much uh that was smoother this time it just s down down naturally I just like to some people listen in again to your conversation so some things people said

Was that it starts with kind of examples that mean something to the pupils right it starts with animals they can picture in their minds but it introduces this idea of like there’s something like foreign and alien about this right monkeys and sheep together that’s weird that’s strange and all pupils even those

Who’ve never heard the word colony or the idea of colonization before they can sense okay there’s something weird going on there’s a contrast here there are things in one place that sort of shouldn’t be there right Sheep next to monkeys European buildings on a tropical island and then after this kind of idea

Of something alien something something out of place has sort of grown in people’s minds that is only then when I would start introducing the idea of the word colony and when I then say a colony was a foreign settlement in distant lands that definition then sort of means

Something because the pupils have got these of sheep and monkeys in their head they’ve got the European buildings on the tropical island in their head whereas if I just LED with right Class A colony is a tropical island I see say colony and they say Colony that is good

For getting their heads around the word but that wouldn’t mean anything to them in the same way that means saying to the seven people earlier that church was an institution or a building that wouldn’t mean anything to them this way around taking them from the concrete from

Things that they can understand to the abstract works much better and I think then once we have fostered or grown that natural understanding those mental images of what is a colony what does it look like what does it sound like how can I picture this once they have that

Understanding then I think we can use definitions and drill those definitions but those definition then already mean something whereas if we LED with the definition and just drilled and drilled and drilled the definition it wouldn’t be as powerful it wouldn’t be as generative the word wouldn’t really mean

Something to them what is then important I think is that we don’t leave it at this one example so after we introduce them to sa to may we then do the exact same thing to many different other colonies in the same unit so in the slavery inquiry we first look at sa then

We look at slavery in Brazil then in Barbados then later we do unit on English colonization in America where we look at Virginia and Massachusetts and then finally at the end of your R we look at Jamaica and how the abolition of slavery how much has really changed life

In in Jamaica but by first introducing those ideas in a concrete way and then using that again and again so for example when we get to Brazil the same words reappear right there are these European buildings again on the shore there jungle behind the there this contrast by doing that again and again

That really Foster a very tangible concrete understanding of a word that otherwise would be really really abstract and really challenging and now again I’m not at all the first or only person to think about in those ways someone who’s thought about this very carefully is Ed H uh who

Again like about five six years ago were was everywhere in the education discourse has sort of died down a little bit since then lots of you will probably be familiar with Ed H’s work on Cultural Literacy he’s a really big name in championing the idea of knowledge knowled in reading comprehension so

Hsh’s key idea on and on and on again and again and again is that reading comprehension isn’t a skill it mostly relies on knowledge on knowing words and knowing the meaning of words well and I always assumed H would be someone who would say no you should just drill

Definitions that’s how children will then learn loads of words so I was really really surprised when I read this book of his which is a more recent one by knowledge matters where he talks at length about how children actually learn words and he doesn’t at all say we should teach through definitions he

Actually uses what he calls the approach of domain immersion which I think is pretty much what I’ve just try to outline I’m going to commit a cardinal sin now and show you three slides with a lot of words on them but I think and I

Will read them out as well know it’s bad um but I think it’s really good to hear that from the horse’s mouth because hsh has thought about that so so carefully so he says this the shest way to enhance the vocabulary of children is the strategy of domain immersion an

Effective Teacher will introduce the subjects let’s say plants and farms and tell stories about plants and farms and ask questions about them not just on one day but over several gradually the subject becomes familiar to all the most verbally impoverished child will begin to answer questions about plants and farms and

Will know implicitly what implicitly what soil is what the main plants are with plenty of stories about the countryside with this principle of domain immersion is when this principle of domain immersion is applied consistently over carefully sequence careful sequence of domains over full school year and then ideally over the

Next year and the one after that vocabulary catchup occurs by a natural process of implicit word learning we have large scale reliable evidence that it works and the reason why he says it works is that a trying to drill abstract definitions might seem really really like a sort of quick Shand solution in

The moment but if the pupils don’t then learn the meaning of the words through those methods then essentially we are wasting time where sometimes going the long way around and really digging into a Word by going concrete to abstract it might seem that that takes longer to

Begin with but actually over time it means that the pupils will learn those words quicker or more quickly than if we just drill the same definition over and over again that just doesn’t stick so it’s about doing something that is slightly longer perhaps but more impactful over something that is shorter

Again and again and again for fewer or lesser results and the other reason why he says domain immersion is a better way of teaching words that is that those meanings those definitions not definitions the meanings are more accurate so this comes back to our example of the dog definition we figured

Out really quickly that the definition of dog we were sharing wouldn’t be very accurate it didn’t for example exclude the idea of wolves it didn’t exclude the idea of little soft toy dogs where it’s actually building pupils mentally images building their organic authentic tangible understanding of the word then

Makes the understanding more flexible they can then reapply that word across context they can understand it in different areas where it pops up across the curriculum and they can use those words words with much much more confidence so this therefore is my uh takeaway for how we teach word meaning I

Think we can’t teach word meaning to begin with through rehearsal we have to teach it inferentially so we have to teach word meanings by going from concrete and leading pupils slowly to the abstract giving them multiple meaningful examples over time in Rich contexts so the colony of sa in a rich

Context then Brazil then Virginia then Massachusetts and so on and therefore we need to really immerse pupils in place and time to understand those ideas and make the abstract concrete and memorable through very very memorable little pieces of information so as they go forward and they do Colony half a year

Later they still perhaps have this residual knowledge in mind they still have this idea of oh they were the monkeys with the Sheep there were the white Portuguese buildings on a tropical island those concrete examples will continue to underpin the understanding and will manifest itself in really powerful

Ways so in a nutshell to close the um session this is what my main takeaway would be word forms and word meanings are both really crucial if we want pupils to use words confidently accurately and to get them to unlock the power of words they need both knowledge

Of the form of the word and the meaning it’s no good if they’ve understood the meaning but can’t remember the word for example or if they can’t spell it they can’t sound it out being thorough on word form is super important but we have to teach word form and word meaning

Through slightly different ways word form we can absolutely drill and nail through rehearsal make it fun make it exciting use lots of chants do lots of little fun quizzes and tasks and um tests but then let’s think about how do we teach word meaning inferentially through rich context first so we can

Then rehearse the word meanings through shorthand definitions which at that point will mean something to pupils and they will be able to use those words flexibly um I’ve not kept track at all about how I’m doing for time but brilliant okay excellent thank you so so much for uh listening attentively for

Your participation any questions please come and find me let me know and thanks very much thank you yes sorry sorry about that okay so we have changed our schedule just a little bit and what we’re going to do is we’re going to have our second keynote speaker now if that’s okay

Jonathan if you’re sorry we’ve kind of sprung that on him so just give him a couple of minutes minutes just for him to get himself all sorted and prepared okay so Jonathan is going to be talking to us um now I’ve got to remember this uh Jonathan is

Deputy head yeah at uh school in St Albans and um he is part of CH teach chartered teacher College of teaching sorry my words will not come out today I really do apologize for this and so he is going to give us a very quick um

About there we go there he is I don’t have a topic though topic we will find out his topic there we go assessment as communication I do apologize uh after this we have got another sponsor talk and then we are going to go for lunch you’ll be happy to know lunch will be

Coming up soon okay thank you just before Jonathan starts talking can I remind you all that our hashtag today is Hash tmhi can you all be tweeting so that we get as as much profile as possible please so if you can be treating that would be fantastic

Okay hi there and thank you very much for um having me and for being here to listen and all the rest of it’s a real privilege um assessment is absolutely fascinating but it is one of those areas which kind of is perhaps more than anything else a little bit prone to edu

Geekery isn’t it you know you get all these kind of questions about reliability and validity and bias and I kind of like that I kind of um sort of really enjoy an element of that but it’s not really what I’m here to talk about today it’s not my what I’m talking about

Today I think is something which in many ways is is simpler and that’s this idea that assessment is communication and it really is of course on the one level everything we do is communication so it’s it’s sort of a truism in a sense because all we do but I think it applies particular

Particularly to assess when we think of all the things that we do in the classroom few things communicate to students more eloquently and more strongly than what we assess and the way we assess it let me give you a very simple example assessment is a way of raising the

Stakes suppose I give you two phrases which a teacher could very easily say in the classroom here’s my first one next week you’re going to be doing an AC it on the restoration perfectly normal sort of phrase that a teacher might use now let me give you the second phrase next week

You’re going to be doing an assessment on the restoration those two phrases are very similar I only changed one word from activity to assessment but the communication changed drastically by introducing the word assessment I’ve raised the stakes and if you’re the students in that classroom you’ve

Pricked up your ears and the way you behave in advance of that activity will be different as a result of it being an assessment because you know that I’ve introduced as the teacher I’ve introduced an element of judgment into the equation that in some way you will

Be evaluated on what you do whereas if it’s just an activity you know fine it’s important it’s something you’ll do but it doesn’t have that element of judgment and that will affect students behavior I’ll probably have said there’s going to be an assessment next week because I’ve been deliberately setting out to

Influence their behavior I will have wanted to incentivize harder work and that’s probably why I mentioned it in the first place so instinctively as teachers we know that assessment is communication and we use that as a tool to support us in our work and to help us in the

Classroom but I think it communicates some other things as well and I want to sort of start to bring this a bit closer into history so one thing that assessment communicates to students even if we don’t intend it to is it communicates the importance of certain Concepts or techniques that we want

Students to carry out like the technique of writing an essay for example or writing an introduction or a conclusion or whatever it might be it communic by by making them part of assessment it communicates to our students that this thing is particularly important either this thing that we want you to know or

This thing we want you to do it also communicates to them potentially depending on how we assess that some things mean we can come to some sort of a holistic judgment about how well a student is doing at history whatever that means but if we are assessing in that

Way we can communicate that now when I was thinking about this and and this idea that all assessment is communication I did slightly kind of perhaps little stupidly suggest that perhaps if all assessment is communication then maybe sometimes it communicates perhaps perhaps an unmet need um and if I was wanting to perhaps

Provoke a debate on social media I might say that but then I suppose what what unmet need could assessment communicate perhaps the unmet need of a senior leader for data or something which is probably an unmet need that doesn’t really deserve to be met so we’ll move

On from that but I am interested in what assessment communicates about history as a subject and also history as an academic discipline I hope that all of us here could kind of agree and come together on the idea that that that an authentic historical education and inducting students into disciplinary patterns of

Thought really matters and is crucial to our work even Central to our work so I think that’s worth examination examination when we assess what is it we’re saying about those things and I think I’m going to start in fact if you’ll forgive me with some undesirable messages that we can communicate about

Over the next few slides I’ve just selected some images to represent these undesirable things or potentially undesirable things where necessary I’ve referenced them on the slide if they’ve come from somewhere that I’ve got um and if I mention any reading material there’s a slide at the end which has all

Of that on it so just bear with me that’ll all pop up at the end now I feel a bit bad about this because obviously if I’m saying these are things not to do these are bad things then I don’t really want to Piller people by picking other

People’s examples so where possible I have chosen material from my own past practice if I possibly can and I have to put my hands up at the say and admit that in the name of assessment I’ve done some bad things some very very bad things I’m sorry you’ll have to forgive

Me they’re not all from me but but most of the examples I’ve chosen um are my own and I’ve been in this game for a while so I’ve had lots of time to do bad things now my first um exhibit is not in fact by me I can’t claim responsibility

For this one but this um is I suppose if we conjure up the spirits of assessment this is the ghost of assessment past now I don’t expect you to be able to read everything on there but it is as some of you will recognize those of you

Who are experienced as I am or perhaps even more so um it’s an extract from the Old National curriculum for history which was in fact given to me when I was on my pgce course back in 2000 I would have got that um I can’t really remember

Why I highlighted certain bits of it it would have been for some purpose at some point but I still have it um sitting at home and I refer to it every now and again it’s quite an interesting doc to look back on but that’s just an extract

From it so thank you Christine for giving that to me and that sort of section of the booklet summarizes what it is that students should be taught in their keystage three historical education in schools and I suppose in a sense it offers a kind of a mental model coming back to Mike’s talk

Perhaps even a schema of what school history is what it’s for and the focus in that section is very much on what nowadays it’s not really a term we used back then but what nowadays we might call disciplinary knowledge but I’m interested in the fact

That it at the top you can probably see it says knowledge skills and understanding and in doing that it sort of introduces this idea of a dichotomy between Knowledge and Skills they’re linked but they’re listed as kind of separate entities perhaps more bizarrely it lists understanding as separate from

Knowledge um I’ve have really no idea where the boundary between the two things lies or quite what that means but it’s something that was there but I don’t really want to get into that today that’s not my topic but let’s just stick with that idea that it has kind of in a

Sense drawn a distinction between Knowledge and Skills the sections then that follow on from that if you look at the um this section which I know it’s a bit small but underneath chronological understanding which we’ve already heard a bit about today but underneath that it says kind of knowledge and understanding

Of Advent people people and changes that’s it an events people and changes um in the past that’s separate from these other sections that come afterwards so that bit seems to be about knowledge it’s even labeled as knowledge but then presumably the other sections afterwards which are called things like historical interpretation and historical

Inquiry they don’t actually say skills but they’re not labeled as knowledge so we kind of assume from that I suppose um that they are the skills it all gets a little bit confusing if I’m honest and there there’s part of me that wonders if it wasn’t really that well thought

Through but but how could I say that um but then again on the subsequent pages of the booklet it then lists substantive content it gets into the nitty-gritty of the the stuff if you like that kids should learn they’re going to learn about the Middle Ages and

We’re going to learn about this that and the other and so those are the things which informally we might have a tendency to call historical knowledge substantive knowledge but that is treated as separate from this so it’s all quite murky but I suppose what am I

Getting at with this I’m not really here to critique the Old National curriculum or to say whether the individual bits on it are good or bad what interests me about it is that it encouraged teachers to treat curriculum content as a sort of interchangeable backdrop for the development of these historical skills

Which are spoken about those bullet points you see whether we call them skills or knowledge or whatever is not really my point to but those bullet points simply can’t exist without knowledge of specific curricular content you can’t for example describe and analyze the relationships between the characteristics of the

Periods and Society studied without knowing Lots about the characteristics of the periods in society studied you can’t evaluate interpretations without knowing Lots about them so when we do separate those things out we’re attempting to do the impossible now I’m sure the authors of that document didn’t intend to suggest that you could develop

Capabilities without knowing Lots but it has led over the years to lots of assessment tasks which have I think inadvertently communicated that to students if I come back to my point of assessment as communication assessment tasks and certainly this was all the rage back when I was a head of Department over 10

Years ago um assessment tasks were really designed very much as vehicles to enable students to to describe to explain and evaluate historical interpretations and so on and once students had done that we had a tendency to kind of tick the thing off on some sort of a level tracker back in the days

Of the Old National curriculum levels we tick it off on the tracker and then there was no effort really ever made to consolidate knowledge because we considered that skill or whatever we were calling it to have been banked in some sense it’s been banked they’ve demonstrated it great let’s move on and

Learn something else now I have to be honest I designed tasks like that myself but it communicated something I think really misleading about history as a discipline because what it was doing I think in that process was it was privileging the disciplinary over the substantive to an excessive

Degree and that of course as I’ve sort of tried to indicate is self-defeating because there can be virtually no disciplinary knowledge without substantive knowledge it simply cannot exist it had a tendency as well I think to put second order Concepts on a sort of overly elevated pedestal now this is not an opposition

To second order Concepts second order Concepts these disciplinary Concepts um which Jacob was referring to earlier actually this kind of I the stuff that we talk about teaching history from the outside or the causation or whatever nothing against those those hugely important but I do think um there

Was a tendency to imbue them with a significance get it you see what I did there with a significance which they perhaps didn’t fully deserve and so those Concepts whether that be causation change continuity similarity and difference and the like they’re really helpful as observations of the sort of

Questions historians try to answer and it makes sense for us to build inquiries and assessment tasks around them in school history but here’s the thing they don’t limit historians you know historical scholarship can actually be quite hard to fit into the mold of some of those Concepts sometimes you know for example

If I take something like Christopher Clark’s Sleep Walkers well he’s kind of deliberately questioning there the idea of causation and to some extent trying to subvert it a bit um and actually I’m kind of echoing Jacob here I sort of plann to say this before he did his talk

But actually there are other perfectly legitimate fields of historical inquiry which aren’t add adequately represented in the conventional list of second order Concepts you know and actually I was going to talk about um historical perspective I was going to mention that Jacob’s already done it for me and

Jacob’s written stuff about this so has Alex beno’s written really good things I think I’ve referenced one of Alex’s pieces at the end about the List’s failure to adequately reflect cultural history and and and obviously Jacob and and Alex and other people have talked about perhaps historical perspective as

A kind of an addition to that list almost as as another second order concept and I think that’s that’s really key that perhaps there’s a danger that in elevating those second order Concepts too much firstly we might miss some things but secondly it just communicates a really inaccurate message about

History as a discipline when we think too rigidly about a single second order concept from a fixed list of options which an outcome task must be built around it sort of gives the impression almost that be before a historian writes an article or a book they need to to log

Which second order concept they’re writing about here which of course is absolute rubbish no historian does I suspect there’s an awful lot of academic historians who wouldn’t even recognize the term or be aware I mean they’ know about them implicitly but they wouldn’t kind of consciously think of this list

Of second order Concepts and I think perhaps we can give them a significance which they don’t deserve um in school history not that we ignore them but I suppose I’m thinking back to what Mike was just talking about is there a sense that when we start with this kind of

Abstract list of second order Concepts and then try to go to the kind of the concrete specific task from them I’m thinking off the top of my head here perhaps we’re going at this the wrong way around and we may be better to look at specific examples of historical

Scholarship and then say oh yeah we can see here that the historian is dealing with causational the historian is dealing with change or continuity whatever and perhaps we get that wrong might return to that point later so the reality is history is quite messy um and

Perhaps this makes it seem a bit more neat um and classifiable than perhaps it really really is so I am going to hang my head in shame at this because I’m going to share with you a truly Dreadful resource which I create I have I don’t even remember creating it but it’s there

It must I can’t deny it I found the resource in my old kind of um hard drive somewhere um which I created it just really illustrates the terrible thinking you get about second order Concepts now I created years ago I must have done this in my department or something in my

Defense I was probably doing it to fend off some ridiculous School feedback policy which the senior leaders came up with but I just can’t believe I wrote this absolute rubbish I was creating this weird Target Bank where I was saying whatever the task was that the

Kids had been done doing if it was a causation task you need to be picking some Target from this pre-written list um and then I’ve put this thing up at the top about kind of knowledge-based targets not being suitable I don’t know what I was thinking of but you know this

Is the kind of weird kind of tendency that when we privilege these second order Concepts too much and we try to distill the disciplinary too much from the substantive then we end up in a complete myth in no way on that was I kind of allowing the teacher to respond in an

Authentic way to the actual student understanding being demonstrated in the work and to respond meaningfully to it it was just this mechanistic process now I’m sure none of you have done anything as stupid as that but I do think the ghost of assessment past here

Does kind of still live on I still see although I’m thinking about this as something from Days Gone By I still see lots of fixed thinking about second order Concepts although weirdly the list does often differ slightly from school to school so they can’t be that fixed um

I still see the language and hear the language of these normally kind of unspecified and rather vaguely kind of conceptualized historical skills whatever they might be um which does give that impression that skills have some sort of disembodied existence separate from any historical knowledge which might underpin so I think the

Ghost of assessment past does still haunt us but what about the ghost of assessment present what form will that take and what messages will it um communicate well you’ll be overjoyed to know it takes the form of a flight path now that one I didn’t come up with that

One um it’s referenced at the bottom it comes from a truly terrifying thread of stuff that um Matthew Beni posted on Twitter a few years ago and that’s just one example from It’s like a kind of just sort of Dante esque journey into hell really this thing thing that you go

Down um really and I couldn’t give you my own example on this because I as I’ve said I’ve done some terrible terrible things but I can proudly say I have never ever created or used a flight path so I had to get somebody else’s well don’t know who don’t know who created it

Mind anyway why am I using this to represent the current state of affairs in assessment well I think it’s because for me this this represents the the monsters un leashed on the world that filled the vacuum left by the abolition of levels back in 2014 and I think we’re

Still in that world in many ways in many schools obviously different schools will be at different stag of this but I think in many ways we’re still in that world because of course for many senior leaders GCSE grades were the logical and obvious replacement for keystage three

Levels right and so they were simply stretched back um into key stage three and again if we’re thinking about that kind of created this expectation for teachers and for students that students would in some way shape or form work at a GCSE standard from year seven onwards and that perhaps also that standard

Would be above in line with or below the expectation that we should have of them now I’ve told you that this isn’t really a talk about assessment Theory and I don’t have time today to explain why that all makes absolute assessment nonsense and I don’t think I need to

Because I suspect I would be preaching to the inverted in this room I’ll save it for one of the talks I do to a senior leaders Gathering and see the Expressions on their faces um but my question today what interests me for this Gathering is what will students infer from this about

History well for one thing I think they’re likely to invert the relationship between the subject and the GCSE grade what do I mean by that I mean that instead of the central goal being to get better at history Al we can debate what that means the grade becomes

The thing to be grasped at the object of the activity and history just becomes the means of getting it so that crucial relationship has become inverted history should be the thing and the grade should be the public way of measuring it at the end of year 11 but we’ve reversed that

We’ve reversed the order now I’m not an idiot I’m not completely naive I realize that with the high stakes pressures of kids in year 11 and the role that gcse’s play in their lives at that stage it’s almost inevitable that that is going to be kind of how they feel and I don’t

Think we can do much about that but there’s no need to transfer the damn thing backwards in into key stage three just because it’s GNA be like that in year 11 we don’t have to make it worse um and I don’t really quite understand why there’s this weird expectation that we

Should you know and I suppose what do we how do we see that manifesting itself in the classroom well I think one thing we see is that GCSE grades sometimes get kind of weirdly reified in Inc correctly not as what they actually are which is

Letters on a piece of paper at the end of year 11 to indicate the standard achieved but as pieces of work the teacher holding up a piece of work this is a grade five well no it’s not it’s a piece of work um or to get a grade seven

You need to do x y and Zed now the advice there may x y and Zed may be good things I’m not necessarily saying it’s bad advice although quite often I think it probably is but it’s you can’t quantify grade seven in that way and I don’t really think we should

And so I think what we’re doing there is we’re we’re elevating the grade above the subject and we’re turning the grade and through this assessment practice we’re turning the grade into a sort of a false god pushing this point a bit further about flight parts and all the rest of

It I think it communicates the message as well that the purpose of assessment is to establish whether or not you’re on track and I think what that does is it reduces assessment in students Minds what’s what’s in reality something hugely complex and authentic and interesting and tentative it reduces it to a

Binary so that a student will either as a result of it get a nice positive message you’re on track or you’re not and I think that can tend to lead to either complacency on the one hand or despair on the other and in the process of now sometimes kids need a kick up

Back side I realize that sometimes we need a bin but we often don’t and I think in the process of kind of creating that binary what we do is we suck all the actual life out of assessment anything that’s real anything that’s interesting about it kind of just sort

Of disappears up that vacuum nothing of real value survives there’s no Dawning realization in the kids’s mind that actually they’ve misunderstood something and that’s really interesting that they’ve suddenly realize what it was now there’s no insight into their own thought process there’s no kind of fertile questions

About what made this piece of work stronger than that piece of work or weaker than other just on track or not it’s become data not history and something really precious I think has been lost in that process now I think the other thing with this is when we kind of have this

Overemphasis on kind of GCSE and and and and so on and grades I think I think we tend to overemphasize and I do see lots of this we tend to overemphasize GCSE question types and assessment criteria in general and it leads to what I think of as the mark schif of of History

Teaching I am going to use a bad example of my own practice here because I think GCSE mark schemes and this is years ago a previous this isn’t even current GCSE this is old gcsc but you know you’ll see this the sort of thing that I’m doing

There you’ll you’ll see where I’m kind of trying to turn the bands the different bands of the mark scheme into student friendly language and I’m using this as a teaching resource and it’ll be for a particular type of question how many marks you’ll get for doing this that and the other

Well gcsc mark schemes I don’t think aren’t even that good at encapsulating excellence in history it’s not even I think often they’re rubbish at it so we’re not even teaching them something good when we do this um but in the process we are drawing their attention away from the actual historical learning

And we’re focusing on this constant sense of kind of chicking boxes and so on so but but when we do this you know sure as night follows day the mark schemes get broken down they get trans translated into this sort of student friendly language they get Revisited

Endlessly in classrooms up and down the land and I think that’s often to the detriment of the content that we’re trying to teach and have you noticed they win a place in our language as the six marker or the eight marker or the utility question or whatever they become

Part of our discourse as if they’re the real thing and they’ve sort of taken over so that’s one other you know another skeleton in my closet admittedly from a long time ago but not something I’m particularly proud of and I think it illustrates the point I’m trying to make

That stuff is bad enough at GCSE in my defense that’s when I was doing it but it absolutely must be kept out of keystage three where it’s a joy isn’t it not to be constrained by an exam board specification and where we are free to develop something interesting and

Authentic and certainly my very very very strong perception when I was a head of department is that what we did at keystage three was more rigorous and certainly more interesting than what we were able to do at keystage four where we did have those constraints and I worry hugely about what we communicate

Assessment as communication what are we communicating to students by introducing elements of GCSE early so there’s the ghost of assessment present but it’s obviously going to be the ghost of assessment yet to come we’re kind of cing up here what might the future hold to illustrate this

Spirit I’m going to use a knowledge organizer now I don’t expect you to be able to read the knowledge organizer that also is one which I produced a little bit more recently this time because knowledge organizers weren’t in fashion don’t think anybody even heard of them when I was ah head of the

Department they’ve become more fashionable um in recent years and I must be clear I’m not here saying knowledge organizers are a bad idea I’m not entirely sold on them but I’m not here speaking against knowledge organizers I’m using this to represent something which I’ll try and explain so

What do I mean by this the the knowledge organizer represents this particular Spirit the spirit of assessment yet to come and I say this because this sort of thing I think powered by the twin engines of on the one hand the popularization of cognitive science in schools and on the other the

Enthronement of the concept of a knowledge Rich curriculum in the ofstead framework both I should be clear things I really welcome in many ways um so so these twin Eng but I think they can lead to some pretty reductive assessment if we think of that in the world of

Assessment and apply that there I think we can lead to some pretty reductive which contributes dodgy messages um about history and I call it the a ghost of assessment yet to come in many ways it’s already with us but I see it seems to be very much on the rise in schools

And unless there’s a radical change I see this probably continuing to be prevalent and becoming more so so what’s the problem here well if we say that everything students need to know about a topic is contained in a knowledge organizer and must be secured in long-term memory good things in

Themselves and that this knowledge this core knowledge if you like to use that term is what we will assess them on then we do risk I think giving the impression that history consists of memorizing a fixed set of facts and that getting better at it means increasing their retrieval strength in our long-term

Memory store now all that’s good stuff but I think there’s a danger that we reduce things to that if we’re not careful now those things on that they’re not enough they’re not sufficient to produce a balanced nutritious assessment diet if we want students to make the sort of meaning that actually Mike was

Talking about earlier the sort of meaning that I’ve tried to describe in a blog post as not so much knowledge rich as knowing richly then I think we need to be more ambitious with our assessment so I’m going to use a non-historical example for you here I know very well that ionic

Bonds transfer electrons rather than sharing them my wife told me um I haven’t got the first idea what that means not a clue it means nothing to me really I I know it’s true I’ve memorized it but I don’t know what it means and that’s not the sort of historical

Knowledge that we want students to end up with and assessing them I think on their factual recall while important should only be part of the picture obviously you want them to be Al to be able to do all sorts of things to draw connections to spot Trends and compare

Some of the stuff that was actually back on that National curriculum document that I was showing you earlier now Jonathan Gran’s already been recommended to you today and I’m going to recommend his work as well because you know there’s a particular blog post he wrote that really struck me which he

Argues brilliantly that much of what we teach students isn’t really intended to be secured in long-term memory certainly not on a permanent basis so obsessively assessing students on that and only on that sort of somewhat misses the point and it communicates a misleading message about history I’m going to push that a bit

Further and suggest that we need to be a bit cautious of overly sort of compartmentalized assessment tasks not compartmentalized componen ified if you like um as assessment activities what I mean by that is students never having to write anything beyond a paragraph or two rather than a full essay again not that

It’s wrong with using paragraphs not that we shouldn’t use those as part of our assessment diet but that on their own they’re not sufficient now they may make the marking easier and that’s a consideration something we should take seriously but they will if that’s all we do communicate a reductive view of

History and they’ll deprive students of the opportunity afforded by an essay to develop their sophisticated historical thought there was recently an excellent blog post I thought which was warning against removing extended writing in the English curriculum um by a teacher called Elizabeth bowling and I’ve I’ve

Referenced it on the slide coming up and I think it’s well worth a read for hisory she just writing about English but it’s well worth a read for history teachers too and it makes the point which is one that I’ve often felt strongly about in the past I’m slightly

Annoyed that she wrote about it um because I could have got credit otherwise um but that if we do that um if we think only of the assessment functions of a Written Task if we’re thinking only of what we can learn from it that’s what assessment is that we can

Learn something we can draw inferences if we think only of that when we’re doing a Written Task we can lose sight of the learning benefits and I’ll return to that point later that sometimes we need to put the learning benefits first and I don’t want that sort of just

Endless kind of atomization of of firstly facts and secondly writing to be the future um of assessment so I’ve conjured up three spirits of assessment for you Spirit of assessment past the spirit of assessment present and the spirit of assessment yet to come and I suppose when I was doing I

Had really planned to turn this into a Christmas carol it sort of happened this week as I was planning the talk and then it did occur to me that I’ve sort of cast myself in the role of Jacob Marley haven’t I sort of bound by these chains forged through my own terrible

Assessment practice in in the past but you know wasn’t mind I’m going to lean into it though since you know it’s sort of happening so I’m going to finish with some um advice to help you avoid my my terrible fate um now this is in no way a

Comprehensive list um but hopefully it will challenge you and provoke your thought when you’re kind of considering assessment so my first point is this um and this is really picking up on the point that I just made about how we’re designing are we thinking primarily about learning or about assessment now

What I’m saying here is that almost nothing we do in schools is purely summative you know we want virtually every ass to have learning benefits obviously we will do some things which have a summative side but we want virtually everything to have learning benefits and so I would argue that it’s more helpful

If we think primarily of some of our assessment tasks not as assessments first and foremost but first and foremost as learning activities and I mean here particularly the endof topic outcome tasks that we might do as we’ve got to the end of an inquiry often they come in the form of extended

Writing I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t use them for assessment you understand I’m not saying they mustn’t be used I’m saying that when we’re designing them and when we’re planning what they should be it may be helpful to First think about the sort of historical thinking we’re trying to develop in our

Students the sort of thing we’re trying to elicit from them and how these tasks are actually not so much an assessment task that’s separate from the inquiry that we use at the end to see how well students have understood the inquiry but they’re actually an integral part of the

Inquiry itself they’re part of the learning process and actually by doing them students will be making meaning that’s part of why we write certainly when I write things down when I blog or whatever it really helps me to clarify my own meaning and so on and it’s part

Of that schema building which again we’ve we’ve been talking about and thinking about now of course we can draw inferences from them but those inferences that we will be able to draw the assessment purpose if you like comes as a secondary consideration I don’t think that applies to everything we do

For assessment in schools but I do think it applies to some and we need to ask ourselves that and see whether perhaps we need to shift the balance slightly in our thinking about assessment design I’ve been mentioning inferences and they’re obviously absolutely Central to assessment but I think when we do

That whenever in any assessment task we need to be cautious about the the conclusions that we attempt to draw about student learning and whether I’m quite pleased with this because I’m paraphrasing Top Gun here whether our inferences are writing checks that our assessment can’t cash please that one so

We’re almost certainly prone to overestimating what we can learn from assessments yeah especially if we are trying to use them it may not be your choice but especially if we’re using them to establish like a GCSE working upgrade or similar first of all don’t do

That but secondly if you have to do that we have to be super careful I think about what we do it’s far better to treat each assessment really as a means of developing hypotheses and further questions which can then be tested and investigated either at the individual

Level or the class level and we need to be very very cautious I think we have a tendency there’s a there’s probably a name for it as a type of bias a tendency to over interpret to over infer from assessments okay um picking up on my earlier point about avoiding reductive

Assessment of factual recall earlier I would strongly Echo Michael fom’s call um it’s referenced at the end for a mixed assessment Constitution be to be honest if you’re echoing Michael for and is cool for almost anything you’re on pretty solid ground but you know on on this issue I think it’s crucial that

Kind of what you know workload reduction is a is a hugely valid aim don’t get me wrong and things like multiple choice questions can be a great way of achieving that and I’m a big fan of multiple choice questions but as you know Michel would say let’s not assess

Only using one particular thing you’ll probably want some of that in the blend you will Chuck this around you will want some stuff at paragraph level but you’ll also want some extended writing in there as well that deserves it stay the Sun so this idea of a of a mixed assessment

Constitution um I think is is is quite key then there’s this business again which I’ve referred to earlier about historical scholarship and obviously we are attempting to induct students into those patterns of thought of an academic discipline should be clear about this that doesn’t mean I don’t think that we

Are expecting them to be mini historians and necessarily sending them off into the archives or and we’re certainly not really expecting to come up with original interpretations of their own and I think sometimes we do a bit a bit too much of that it’s often more interesting to see what they say about

Other people’s interpretations um but I think we need to make sure that the sort of questions we get them to engage with are recognizably historical questions and draw on historical scholarship and we can use actual historical scholarship for actual historical scholarship for this so I mentioned the Christopher

Clark book earlier you know actually thinking about that engaging with it and answering question questions about it is a good way to achieve it students might be asked questions about what a particular historian is trying to achieve for example or why this historian perhaps differs from previous

Accounts and sometimes I think that can be better than asking them to say whether they agree or disagree um or which is the most convincing interpretation but we can be drawing on historical scholarship and I think that provides some pretty Solid Ground um for assessment design I’ve talked a bit about mark

Schemes um and obviously if the assessment diet is rich as it should be I’ve talked about that mixed assessment Constitution then generic mark schemes are almost certainly going to fail to do justice to each individual task and I think they also make it all too easy to slip into those really bad

Habits like I was talking about earlier where we Mark schem ify the curriculum um and the mark scheme then replaces the curriculum replaces the history and it becomes the thing we’re encouraging students to aim for rather than just a tool to measure how good an answer is

And nearly 20 years ago now quite a long time burnam and brown wrote this great article in teaching history where they called for task specific mark schemes but if you haven’t read it I would strongly recommend you do because I think it’s as relevant today really as

It was when they wrote it back in 2004 so think about these kind of task specific mark schemes consider that I’m also just hugely skeptical even if we are using good mark schemes I’m hugely skeptical of the value of mark schemes as teaching tools you know they

Can Pro be they can provide a function enabling us to Mark the work that’s what they’re designed to do but there’s almost this kind of inexorable draw for them to become the teaching tools and I’m very skeptical about that students understandably I don’t blame them students want a formula we all want a

Formula you know how will I do this thing is there a hack is there a shortcut is there something but actually the problem is there isn’t because in my view when we do that when we turn the mark scheme into a formula it’s detrimental to good history

And it what it does is it then leads to students rolling out thoughtless kind of prepackaged answers rather than responding thoughtfully to the demands of specific question you know and if you teach a level you may have noticed the kind of the the weird tendency that all

Students seem to want to turn every question into a causation question and I’m convinced a lot of it’s because they’ve had this sort of formula for what an essay should look like and you’ve got your four factors or whatever it be and you’ll write a paragraph about

Each factor and that then starts and it it does them damage because they’re questions that don’t require that or require something completely different um which I think is really problematic so we need to be wary and and just avoid doing I think um turning the mark scheme

Into a formula I think it’s much better to exemplify and actually look at some really high quality examples of historical writing perhaps under the visualizer it’s a really good thing to do get the pens out and really annotate them and dig deeply into what it is that

This author’s trying to achieve at the word level the sentence level the paragraph level and the overall essay level and actually kind of why are trying to get under the Bonnet of the essay if you like why is this working why is this why is this person doing this and you’re exemplifying good

Practice there rather than trying to kind of have this kind of generic formula from the marks SCH which I think is quite unhelpful and unhealthy now I’m realistic I know that sometimes you are working within a prescriptive School assessment framework and sometimes it’s your school systems will require you to

Give a score to assessment tasks I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing sometimes you know my school I’m I’m in charge of it for goodness sake and sometimes we have a system where I do ask for a school to be provided that could be useful but we have to bear in

Mind again thinking about assessment as communication we have to bear in mind that when we do that when we assign a score it raises the stakes of the assessment in the minds students sometimes that’s useful but it affects what the task communicates to them it is

Less likely I think that they will take risks on that assessment if they know there’s a score attached to it and the score of course when we give them the score it can provide a distraction from formative feedback so it may be worth thinking about separating those things

Out and when there’s a score not perhaps worrying so much about the formative feedback and focusing the formative feedback on other tasks perhaps I’ll leave that for you to think about but as a rule if I was kind of you know trying to give you break my own advice here and

Giving you the formula I suppose I would suggest giving scores sparingly um but also perhaps restricting it to when we really need to in order to fulfill the school’s reporting requirements just think hard but does this need a score is the score going to add anything to the assessment

Process what am I trying to achieve through this assessment process and is a schore going to add value to it or not pushing that further again I’m well aware that your hands are going to be tied by school school assessment Frameworks so I appreciate you may not

Have the power to follow my advice but I would strongly suggest that raw scores or percentages are preferable to converting that into a grade particularly GCC grade at keystage three as I’ve already talked about but as a rule I I’m very wary of of converting you know sometimes there there’s a time

In a place perhaps after a set of mock exams or something but as a rule I think we need to be very wary of converting a score from an assessment task into a grade as soon as we do that and this is not a talk about assessment Theory but

As soon as we do that we’re drawing inferences which are questionable at best and potentially highly misleading um so I think that’s something to avoid if we can and even more than a score a grade is going to dominate students atten ention when the work is returned and potentially distract them from more

Important things now my final point on here is you know I’m really mindful that all this stuff I’m throwing at you particularly from somebody who’s not even ahead of History these days that that can seem really daunting and particularly you know you may be a head of History who’s

In charge of your Department’s assessment regime and I’m not trying to make you feel bad about it you may have inherited something which has all this terrible stuff embedded in it you know if it comes as any consolation you know at my School the assessment that we do

Comes up well short of loads of this stuff and we’ve got tons of work so the head of History I know has things that he wants to do but it takes time and it takes effort and you try things and they don’t always work out so I would say

That just like a good curriculum building a good approach to assessment takes a long time and we’re not going to fix it all in a few weeks or even over the course of an academic Year please try not to feel bad about that you know I firmly believe that by teaching kids

History at all you’re contributing positively to their education and I really believe enhancing their lives so you’re not doing them any harm while you work on this it will take time but of course if you can improve it over time then you will be making a real difference to the quality of what

They’re experiencing but I should warn you that of course when you get to the point you were originally aiming for if you’re anything like me you’ll find that you’re thinking about assessment has actually moved on and you’ve now found something else to be disatisfied about

Um and so the goal posts are kind of constantly shifting but that’s just something we get used to as and of course there’s also the whole frustration of having to dance to the tune which is probably a really discordant tune as well of your school senior leadership but you know there’s

Only so much you can do now you’ve been kind of hugely patient um to give me your your time and attention obviously that’s not something really should be reading now but if you get the slides electronically afterwards that’s just some references um I’ve referred to various

Things on there in my talk and I’ve tried to include all the stuff I’ve mentioned on my final slide and there’s also just at the bottom a few pieces of f reading you might be interested in on the theme of assessment if for some reason you know you haven’t had quite

Enough of what I have to say you know do look me up on I’m I’m at Mr Mount Stevens is my handle on Twitter or X or whatever it is these days although I would be honest I’m spending very little time on there now since uh elon’s taken

Over on threads and trying to make a go of that one thing if I can give a plug for that it’ be great to see some more history teachers on threads actually and getting the real sort of development of a kind of subject community on there and

The discourse that used to be on Twitter when it was decent um um would’ be really Lov to see that developing so you know do look me up by all means there’s also my blog is referenced on there somewhere um so well welcome to do that

But if I can leave you with a final thought um you know history as an academic discipline and history as a school subject is unique and it’s wonderful you know we’ll all agree on that because we’re history teachers yeah but our assessment then should act as a

Lamp to illuminate that not as a kind of a hammer to eliminate anything that’s subjects specific and so please be proud of the idiosyncrasies of our subject and do make the case within your schools for assessment which will communicate just how great history is thank you very much for listening

Okay test oh it is on are you saying I’m quiet no no no okay thank you so much for that that was absolutely brilliant I know I sat there kept on thinking about past assessments and having trauma about the past assessments I have done with

Students um and so on so thank you so much uh we now have our fabulous another fabulous sponsor come to have a quick talk to with you uh this is uh Oxford University press who as you all know have just come out with some fantastic books um all of which did I have

Actually all got um and I will tell you lunch is coming I promise our lunch break is coming up but I have a little word from our sponsor o thank you thank you uh hello everyone uh I’m uh Margaret I’m the uh educational consultant for o

In um sa Nork and Cambridge so if there are any schools out there from those regions um hello you might see me again in um visiting your schools um I just wanted to um uh tell you a little bit about uh the latest additions L publishing um to uh added to our history

Portfolio um so we will start with um I’m Sor I’m G interrup you can you hold it I okay okay uh um can everybody hear me now okay um hello great uh so uh starting with uh four uh major titles that we have um uh published just recently uh these are

Keystage three history depth studies um four titles uh which have come as um um to address the need to diversify um the keystage three curriculum uh to add um new voices diverse voices uh narratives uh and uh to expand the lens through which um uh history at keystage

Three is taught um the series editor is a a very popular well-known um author and writer Aron wils uh but we have got contributions from uh a lot of um historians uh Educators and uh writers uh two of which we have uh in this room uh we have got ktie Amory who

Contributed to uh um African kingdoms uh and um uh Josh uh uh pre Gary uh who contributed to uh fight for rights um all the books are written in a very accessible uh style uh the style uh that all of our uh publishing is uh is written in um accessible style um

Engaging um stimulating uh discussion um so if I uh just let us go and have a look at the covers uh of the books uh so we have got the British Empire um British Empire covers um the case studies that cover America India Australia and Africa uh looking at the

Very um image on the cover we can uh we can quite easily say that it is going to be a story uh told in a in a different way from the from a different perspective we have got Mahatma Gandhi uh with his uh followers there and

Sarini Naidu on Sal March uh in India then we have African kingdoms um for four uh exciting fascinating stories uh of medieval African kingdoms Mali Benin shanhai and Assante uh shining the the spotlight on African kingdoms um on the cultural riches uh political might and and the

Level of of development they reached in precolonized Era uh fight for rights uh in modern Britain um interesting uh case studies very uh in depth treatment of women’s rights disability rights uh black civil rights and LG uh lb g lgbtq r right um and then moving on to

Uh migration nation um the uh uh image here obviously shows the iconic wind Rush uh but the which which is a symbol of a relatively recent uh migration but that book spans um uh centuries uh showing that migration has been um uh around in the country for uh going back

To U Kelts and uh Anglo-Saxons and so on uh the case studies are on uh Jewish migration Irish Caribbean South Asian uh and Eastern European migration uh and again these these migrations are treated in in more depth not again the recent ones but uh where covering the migrations uh through

Centuries um the next slide uh uh we have got um podcasts as well which uh support the case studies the the depth uh studies uh published um so the most recent podcast that has just been released is on uh migration um where uh Aon wils talks uh about uh

Sharees insights on how to teach migration and um discusses the the big questions about migration um gives insights how to approach the subject to teach it with with empathy and um uh and and uh also emphasizes why it’s important to open space in the curriculum for that subject um the um

Next coming um podcast is about um fight for rights so um all the links uh to the podcast are available on our website uh then we have got new publishing for AQA gcsc history uh uh America 1840 uh to 1895 um expansion and consolidation uh with um an in-depth

Treatment of uh indigenous um indigenous people so it’s showing the history from the the uh perspective of indigenous um uh people in America uh and AQA gcsc history uh again that has been revised uh in light of um diversity and uh inclusion um what we have done with uh

Elizabethan England and Norman England we have separated those uh two themes were together in in one book uh in the past they have been now uh separated for uh ease of use and teaching um so we go going to the next um are we going like very quickly nowor

Sorry so this is the next one yeah uh the new course just has that has just been published by o is at Exel uh so uh we have we have never done at Exel uh we have been publishing uh on for gcsc uh AQA now this is a brand new course from

Us and the available titles are migrants in Britain medicine in Britain early Elizabethan superpower relations and the Cold War VMA and Nazi Germany so very much um up toate um with regards to uh exam uh questions examination preparation um the the whole course is also supported uh on our digital

Platform kabod if you’re familiar with with that it is uh where uh the books are available in the digital form uh but there are also um there’s also support uh in the shape of extra interactive activities Automark assessments um uh summative and formative quizzes u a lot of knowledge

Retrieval so um if you’re interested to trial Kaboodle uh free trials are available to schools who are interested um so that is yeah we have covered that and finally thank you uh finally uh this series is uh the hottest of the press series uh released by um Upp uh Oxford

Revise um H new series uh to support the uh gcsc um at Excel revision work uh for students so the titles we have got the titles um at the moment that are already available and they are the American Web early Elizabeth in England the USA 19 5475 Anglo Saxon and Norman England

Medicine in Britain Crime and Punishment Vima and Nazi Germany superpower relations and the Cold War there will be more coming um but these these ones are already available uh they follow um the structure of the book is based around uh knowledge retrieval practice um very core very well laid out knowledge

Followed by uh a lot of retrieval um very prominent retrieval sections and then exam practice um questions um the books are available uh at uh 50% off if an order is placed through uh through schools with us they’re available in High Street stores and wh Smiths and

Water STS uh but if a school places an order with us it’s 50% off so it’s three pounds per book and that’s it thank you very much but everybody sorry hopefully you can hear me I don’t need this but this is now lunch so uh thank you very much

To everyone that’s spoken we’re going to go for lunch till about half past 1 um I’ve got a list of who’s ordered lunch if you’re a speaker you can get lunch so please we’ll show you where to go in a moment if you want lunch if you want to

Get lunch and go out to get lunch Marks and Spencers if you come out of of this building and you go left overload of I’m really sorry I didn’t tell him the dress code this morning so he walked up looking beautifully smart and then uh he

Realized that he was the only one in the suit so sorry yeah sorry it’s my fault should have told him yesterday um so this is Cameron Mitchell so he’s been teaching for five years uh he does have an aspiration to be a head of department

And he’ll be a great one um he is alarmingly as he’s written down here passionate about Soviet and Chinese history he never know he might tell you how he got stuck in Russia just before coid started so that was fun uh and he’s the pr owner of multiple sets of

Historical armor which he does tend to try and wear on a regular basis so uh without further Ado this is yeah of course can you hear me like this yes no you can click okay how about this yes excellent fantastic okay um well first of formost as Steph rightly said I’ve only been

Teaching for five years I think I’m in a room with the majority of people here are heads of department or people higher up so I feel a little bit out of my depth but what I’m trying to share with you here is something I found particular use useful in classrooms I think what

I’m trying to show as well is how we can try and evolve other skills and what I’m essentially talking about mind changing the slid sorry is I’m talking about databases um I’m talking about not just you know the data that we all dread and hate in our schools I’m talking about

Actual historical databases bringing them into the classroom and getting students to practice some of the skills that we don’t normally think of as historical skills and I’ll sort of sort of talk for my justification of doing that in a second if you can have the next slide now I’m going to introduce

You to someone very important first and foremost I’m only been aware of him for a few months but this is my great great Granddad Robert bold very unfortunate name um now my great great Granddad we only found out about him due to the fact we had a silver silver badge uh which my

Aunt uh covered from uncovered sorry from a pile of detritus in her old house now this silver badge implied that he was either injured or died during the first world war and it set us off on a little Quest over the last summer to try and find out who he was eventually we

Got got there through National Archives little ancestry.com turns out he had an unfortunate meeting with an artillery shell uh at the Battle of lose in 1915 not much very unfortunately but it did get me thinking about the value of these sort of little individual journeys of learning people’s individual history of

Going forward to try and identify who I am as a person not only the value in terms of what research can be gained from that but also the value to an individual human being to identify their own past and as what makes them them why they are here today

Kind now many of us when we teach history we have a key set of skills we want our students to walk away away with at the end of maybe key stage three if they choose not to GCC or at the end of year 11 if they choose not to do a level

Or perhaps IB or whatever um Laura rightly pointed out earlier that we as a department in my school Ango European we are thinking about what do we want our children to be able to achieve if they decide to leave history alone after three years like what do we want them to

Be able to do what do we want to look like what do we want their curiosity to where do we want to take them I came up with this very brief and frankly quite limited list of things like written English communication uh analysis independent work teamwork creative thinking reasoning and research as well

But some of these skills don’t get me wrong they are very useful and frankly they are very transferable as well a lot of our students will go on to do for example law or psychology or perhaps business with some of the skills that we rightly give them but it’s worth pointing out a

Rather unpleasant fact and it’s something that I have to kind of remind our department sometimes the vast majority of our students will not do a historically related job when they finish education in fact very few of them ever go into anything historic related and there’s a good reason for

This um a certain colleague of mine uh printed off some A4 posters quite recently which sort of talk about the entry jobs uh that many histor history graduates go into and I had an a level Class come in as I was putting them up and they were looking at them say oh

Okay I could be a tour guy or I could be a civil servant and then one of them points around to me and goes all of these jobs all 12 of them their starting salaries are less than 30k I was like yeah so I live in chord what’s 30k going

To get me I’m like just study history um it’s very hard to convince them to study history at a higher level it’s very hard for them to see the financial benefit of studying a subject where ultimately historically historical related jobs are few and far between when I was at Uni I

Had a um a course Counselor come and speak to us about what we potentially do as careers after uni and the first thing she said to us as an entire lecture cohort of 12 20 was librarian and as you can imagine the enthusiasm was incredible um no many of them won’t go

Into history jobs and one of the things I’ve been trying to do in my classrooms over the last few years is I’ve been trying to not only prepare them for a love of History something that will they will keep with them for their entire lives uh not only prepare them for you

Know the Comm common English skills and the analysis and the independence I’ve been trying to prepare them for the world of work they might well go into that has no relation to my subject now you might be wondering why on Earth my granddad fits into this or my great

Great-grandfather Ro and that’s because I want to talk to you a little bit today about historical databases and why I think they are worth including in your classroom now when I’m talking about historical databases I’m talking about websites which offer essentially endless streams of data about something

Historical I’m going to give you three examples in a minute that I’ll allow you to you know get your phones out and have a lookout very quickly if you’re like me and keep like 50 tabs open on your on your Chrome browser like this might be

One to keep for your lessons but I think the values of this of these historical databases and bringing them into classrooms of all age groups so from year seven all the way up until year 13 has proven itself incredibly valuable in my room and may well in prove valuable in

Yours obviously it in our classrooms is very important um we need students who are familiar with it and have the it skills to work effectively in the jobs that they will be doing with they’re 20 when they’re 30 and we are sadly close to 50 um we need also greater

Familiarity with systems I have the fortunate privilege of having quite a few friends who went to University and studied history I’m the only one who is doing a history related job but they consistently say that the things they have to deal with in civil service or business is processing data managing

Databases using those databases to extrapolate information that they need for their role not only that it’s also Worth showing them that history can be modern that there are modern history projects should we say accumulating data that they can take part in open source projects that allow them to maintain a

Part in history even if they don’t have a specific job there and there are other benefits as well research skills that are available to businesses preparing students for roles that may not yet exist heard that one before um and they also an empowering tool for self-discovery I like to show them for

Example my great great-grandfather and say I found this because of the schools that we are going to look at today maybe you might find your own someday you might find a distant relative that might be worth including I tried to think of these kind of things inlying I’ve ever done one

Before um that it’s worth making sure that you guys can walk away with something that’s tangible that’s useful that you can actually put into practice on the Monday morning when you get into your classroom and so while I have a whole list of different websites and

Sort of should we say data sources that we could use I’ve narrowed them down to three one in year nine one year 11 and one for year 13 as well this first one I I think is amazing um I would give credit to a lecturer at Essex university called Sean Kelly for

This one and the URL is up on the top right hand corner should you wish to quickly look it up on your phones if you want to this is a very comprehensive slavery database put together by I’m not really kidding here about 70 to 80 different lecturers across uh Britain

Portugal Spain and uh the us as well now this is particularly valuable because this allows you to filter by country it allows you to filter by destination allows you to filter by origin and I’ve used this with year 9 consistently for two years now and every single time I do

It although it requires a lot of teaching how to use the database it allows them to make their own voyages as it were of self-discovery for example I was asked in the year n lesson about two years ago sir did Russia get involved in slave trade now me thinking I’m you know

Bigy big brain saying no I’m not aware of any involvement in the slave trade 20 minutes later no there was clearly slave Wes from Odessa how many about 500 oh how many people transported overall somewhere in the region about 28,000 Russian Empire was involved in the slave trade I learned something and

A kid taught me something new none of us in the room knew that beforehand I found that incredibly useful the next one for me thank you this one you might have seen before this is a very famous website called open doomsday.exe this is something I use for

Year 11 when we look at the Norman England 1066 to 1100 AQA course and I like to show them as a homework we live in we working in International School sorry so I will get them to have a look at the local area I will get them to try

And find out what it was like what what was going on in in 1086 and again loads of discoveries being made not just in terms of the local area but in terms of historical language as well I get asked what a cob is I get asked what a hide is and um

Again little discoveries are made that are quite relevant to their understanding of their world for example I found out recently that Romford did not exist in 1086 my students were quite frilled but you get the general idea there are little Voyages of self-discovery that can be made just

With these little things and this can be mostly student Le rather than teacher Le the last one’s a little bit special to me I’ll explain this one a bit more depth this is something I used for year 13 I think I did mention I was a Soviet

Historian so I’ll get myself worked up here now I’ve had the luxury of meeting the guy who put this one together I spoke to him for four minutes and that time he managed to sell me two books he was a great guy um this one is from a

Russian website this is gag uh the map.org technically it’s Ru this is one of those websites I’m very thankful was not banned as a result of the February 2022 Invasion but it’s still there um this is put together by the gag Museum which work out of Moscow and the gag

Museum is a is a company that is should we say not particularly prized by the state for some reason and perhaps one of you guys can fill me in on this I can’t figure out myself Putin’s regime is not overly happy with people dredging up the uh historical atrocities of the past no

Idea why but this again is really useful context to put in with kids to speak with them about why it is that this is not funded by the state why it was initially funded that funding was rescinded after I think about 2019 and they continued it privately it’s also

Were discussing things about why their data sets are incomplete they will proudly if you were to go on the about part on the top left hand corner they will proudly announce that their data sets in terms of prisoners and it does list hundreds upon hundreds of thousands

Are incomplete and the reason for that is because the Russian State won’t open their archives again a really really good conversation about why the Russian State still feels the need to hide stalinist cries in the modern day again Voyages of self-discovery are important here through this I found out that one

Of my students had a great great grandfather who found his way into one of these camps and they were able to talk a little bit about their experiences through them these three examples are very useful to use in lessons and just to remind you the purpose of these this is about trying to

Prepare them for something bigger than perhaps just our history love our love for history it’s about preparing them for jobs that they might perhaps not know about yet about preparing them for roles outside of history that might be more appealing in a time where fin eventually things are looking tight and

Their priority will not be their love of History perhaps but it might well be their financial future thank you uh thank you for that um I will admit I immediately went onto those websites and have sent those links to my department right now to go oh my God can

We use this can we use this they really good never seen those websites for my life um we now have another fabulous speaker called Tara who is going to be looking at uh Rich craes um in East angria particularly yeah is that correct okay all about here really isn’t it oh I

Get a clicker you do good luck oh good luck oh that’s me so I’m star I look something like that I work at a school just to the north of Cambridge and I feel like everyone has heard of my school five people have mentioned it to

Me already I work at impington we are an international IB School which focuses on inclusivity and actually that got us thinking because the children we have in our cport are very International the children we have actually are very very different and I use the word different because a lot of our children have

Statements they have ecps and actually getting them to understand which craes let alone Shakespeare in English is hard work so so I sat down with some English teachers and I have to thank them and apparently they’re all watching this at some point so thank you to English and sort of

Thank you to my history colleagues because it took a lot of work so in an IB School you need to have cross-curricular like studies you have to have what is known as an interdisciplinary unit and actually that is because of critical thinking that critical thinking spans different subjects it’s something we’re very proud

Of but more importantly we tend to focus on Concepts we tend to look at ideas like poverty about difference about like empathy and actually that quote at the bottom something very very important to me especially as a mother is actually I want my child to come out as an

Empathetic human being a particularly hard thing to do at the moment postco post you know a dare I say a certain man on X tweeting really misogynistic ideas we want our children to come out as better human beings so actually Crossing subjects where they can find tangible links is really really important and

Then we had s then come up with a subject and I trained at Bristol I spent some time at UEA and actually I got reading Gaskill and I adore gaskill’s work because I’ve actually as someone who doesn’t speak English as their first language it’s easy to read and therefore

We got talking about witches and the vulnerable the poor The Outsiders and then we got talking about significance and that opened a whole can of worms because my colleagues soone went we don’t like significance it’s hard it’s stressful and I’m like yeah I can see it because actually if you look at ker

Apps’s article which I appreciate is a few years old which informed everything we are doing it looks at how it changes over time how do those experiences of richcraft or Rich crazes especially in East Anglia actually change and how are they seen over time and then I did an

Mpq I got a bit geeky I read a lot of the EF and actually cross-curricular links according to English and actually in particular of English is really really beneficial and that’s actually if I’m trying to persuade a head teacher who is cost driven and she is absolutely

Wonderful and she lets us like we are empowered by her in so many ways if I turn around and say actually it’s really effective it’s a really good argument to have and actually when talking to English they do this at GCS they look at history in their GCS they look at

Shakespeare and they look at context and I’ve taught some English I don’t know how English teachers do it they’re absolutely incredible in terms of finding links and finding content so if we can help them then maybe they can help us so I got a bit bored I worked my way

Backwards and this is my sort of Ideal World it was a lot more yellow on the slide sorry my husband formatted my PowerPoint I’m never letting him do it again apparently looks really pretty that greeny Cary color we’re going to have words over strictly later but actually we are assessment driven I’m

Sorry to say I’m now going to go back and rewrite my entire curriculum and people have mentioned things that we’re not including and I’m just going to park that for till next week but actually in history we do four assessments and in the nyp the middle years program we have

To have 18 lesson inquiries which is a lot and it drives me up the wall but actually it’s a really nice challenge most of the time right so first of all if you look at our even more breakdown because actually when we were planning this we were like oh God

This is too hard we can’t do it students need context and actually they need local context if you go to Cambridge if you go to Great St Mary’s which is the big church opposite Kings you will see the place where one of the first riches

Was accused and put on trial if you go a bit further down the road to Jesus scen you will see a random piece of grass and go that’s where the first woman was hung and the kids turn around go since she burnt you’re like no only in Scotland oh she was

Hung yes there’s a woman hung on that random piece of grass and we walked around Cambridge in year seven they’re like that piece of grass and we’re like that piece of grass and it’s like you’ve like reinvented the wheel in front of them and actually so we do the context

We look at case studies we go to our own archives and that’s really nice because actually our children don’t know much about local history we’re a big school we have a huge amount of primary school feed and actually it really does cement our local history knowledge English do lots of knowledge

Assessments they look at like Shakespeare in language I still don’t quite understand I Amic pentameter that feels really awful P it’s like a I’m leaving it up to them but actually the assessments we all do are in conjunction with each other and this took a lot of

Work and actually if you can do this with English you can do it with any subject I feel like I spoke about this in my PGC 13 years ago about SL slavy and sources and something ask Helen over there she’ll be able to tell you we go

Way back um so the breakdown in our 18 unit lesson units we start at Easter and we go right through to July and it is a lot so our first term is context why were women accused of being witches why in particular were local women accused of being witches but actually the social

Conditions of the time I always find it the most random fact in history when Gaskill stood up in the first year Union went did you know there was a mini ice age and I was like no there was a mini ice age and the kids are like no I feel

Like one of those children for the first time that’s a mini ice age and all the props di oh W I know I’m really geeky but actually kids love it because it becomes real so we look at wider rich places based on local context but also

The national but also what is going on in the world around them which is very very IB we then start to look at very individual people from May half term and English finally get involved because they have more lessons so apparently they can’t start in Easter so we’ll

Forgive them they’re looking at poetry from April so we’ll let them off the hook they start looking at actually the Globe Theater they look at Shakespeare they look at his language and actually as someone who’s taught a bit of English actually it makes a lot of sense I Amic

Pentameter is a very very powerful technique that Shakespeare uses really effectively so they look at four different speeches um or or and I put three of them on there they look at three very famous speeches one from Lady MC Beth which is outd spot you’ve got and you’ve got Richard I third

All of which we have given context to in other units of work in year seven we at the same time this is very much in conjunction and hoping we’re going to get to the same place which is a bit hard of a strike place but we

Somehow got there this year we look at an berin Elizabeth Clark Matthew Hopkins and then finally Sarah good so we try and look at four people that actually the students wouldn’t have heard of everyone knows who amberin is apparently from Horrible Histories they sing divorce beheaded dedly and I’m like well

Not completely accurate but I will forgive you but actually they don’t understand what her actual life is like why was she accused of being a rich for example or Elizabeth Clark I’ll show you an example later on a disabled elderly woman an outsider vulnerable poor and now that find I find that really

Pertinent because actually we’re teaching children who are in our school potentially disabled potentially come from the poorest of backgrounds Cambridge is really affluent go to our Estates they’re incredibly poor we take those children from that catchment and then we look at Matthew Hopkins who tortures Elizabeth Clark so they’ve got

A contrast and finally Sarah good from Salem now I’m going to mention we do a significance assessment actually we give them a list of questions but we want them to understand how that changes over time but the best assessment we do is actually we Mark absolutely nothing English mark

This and I’m going to read it to you and then it sounds really random but this is actually an example from one of our weaker students who has a reading age of around eight they did not write it they spoke it because we wanted them to understand why these women this man is

Significant we ask them to turn into a speech with rhyme with simple sentences with plosive language and actually a child who has such a low reading age with a statement and we have to adhere to all of those because it’s so important we include them because otherwise our children can’t become

Better human beings if they don’t understand who is they have in their class and this child with that meing age with that special need stood up in front of their peer group and performed that speech and actually I’m not even going to read it to you I’m just going to let

You think and dwell on it because it’s so incredibly powerful and it’s the last two lines but what’s my crime I’m old I’m poor I’m lame if that’s my fault then then there’s others that are the same you can feel the heartbeat you can feel the I Amic pentameter English read Gaskill

Relearn the language techniques and children write beautifully they speak beautifully and actually that child understands poverty not because they’re poor but because actually they’ve spoken about it they’ve read about it and actually they’ve informed others about it and then because we’re the IB we tend to reflect about everything all of the

Time a million times a year all of the time and actually it’s about learning empathy I want my son to be a kind human being I don’t think if you’re a parent I guess you’re with me uh it doesn’t always feel like that when he’s screaming his head off in town please

Come and say hi if you ever in Cambridge and see me tearing my hair out metaphorically but actually that I would be a proud mother if he came out being empathetic and actually we asked him about the links between subjects we don’t give them a grade we tried doing

That last year and realized actually it was a bit clinical so actually how can we Mark a reflection and actually we just asked them to write now and actually how do the subjects complement each other is it just about context we hope they say no we hope they find like

Links between the different subjects and the different people they’ve been learning about but more importantly it’s about serving others and that’s a very IV thing which is about helping others in the community whether that’s beyond their class in their school Community whether that’s people in their Village

Or their Town whether that’s people in their Global community and all we ask is a 100 words of how did you find it did you not even did you enjoy it did you come away with anything if you didn’t the world won’t come to an end but try and find those

Links and the final thought we get Gaskill to come and speak to our students unfortunately he we had a bit of a mess up with time tables schools aren’t perfect they planned exams for when we were going to have them in and then we had cancel but we’ve got a video

Recording and he’s coming in hopefully again this year but it’s this quote and I’m a bit of a Gasco fan because we go back like 17 years you know because he taught me at Uni so I feel like I have to credit him a lot in this but actually

Our students are anxious they’re insecure who knows what’s going on in their lives actually who knows what was going on in your lives when you were growing up and sometimes that’s one of the reasons we become teachers I know we love our subject I love history bit of a

Geek but actually I also became a teacher teacher because my background wasn’t always perfect but so I wanted to just make it better for people which I know is very cheesy but fundamentally we’re home away from home right so actually if we look at that that all the

Off you know we’re looking at poverty cost of living economic depression I’m not mentioning anything about government sorry um disruption Civil War these are all feelings that children have and therefore we have a responsibility through cross-curricular learning to actually try and address that and actually shakespare witchcraft

Is just for us a vehicle but actually opening doors is more important thank you thank you so much for that that was absolutely brilliant I mean to get a student to actually be able to say something like that I know I’ve got students in my class that would struggle

With stuff like that so absolutely amazing um just before we finish our final little teach meet teach meet uh I just want to say thank you to all of our sponsors that are here today um open University press and for their little speech that they’ve done today um and

The new books that have coming out Collins providing us with all their resources and some feebs for um raffle as well today hter education as said they H are speaking just a little bit later on so don’t worry we are going to hear from them and from our final um

Sponsor sorry my mind went BL then time travel Who again we will hear a little bit from later on our final teach meet is going to be um Matt Jones who’s going to be talking about booklets is that correct and climate history right okay I’ll let you off on that there you go

Sorry after everyone and should want I talk to you about sort of booklets how we’ve used them I know it’s a big of it tou subject but also something I’m quite passionate about which is climate history because I think it’s a gap that’s emerging I think something that

We need to start thinking about how we’re going to fill that gap for our students so when I stck over as a head of History it was me and two ects and they just looked to be like we need some support some help so I thought let’s go

Down booklets but I didn’t was going to take them from anywhere and just use them as they were so I thought let’s build them from scratch let’s make them for our students and make them applicable and what I found is it was actually a really good process it me me

Actually stop and think in the long term what do I want them to know how are they going to get there like Emily was saying this morning what is the retrieval what are we going to think about how we’re going to do because it forc you to do

That you’re not just thinking lesson’s lesson you’re thinking this is going in for printing in there’s going to be 150 copies I need to make sure it’s right so the first thing we did is sat down and figure out what do we want them to know what’s the key vocabulary which

I’m sure we’ve all in our curriculums and then shared them with the people so they know what’s coming up and what we want them to know what we want them to to learn it also for our staff as they’re developing forces them to figure out this is what they need to know by

The end this is the knowledge we want them to walk away from this is some examples of the retrieval and actually in practice if you go down the troop and you can have a hybrid model with an exercise book and a booklet but they come in they can pick

It up and they’re straight onto the retrieval there’s no issues there some of them keep them in their bags and they take them they do extra work it’s brilliant it really works quite quickly but also when they don’t get it one of the problems with booklets I saw is it’s

Quite restrictive what you do next so we made a space a reteach space where that teacher could make the decision in the classroom if they don’t understand it if there’s misconception if the retrieval isn’t working they can introduce another task on the fly as I’m sure we’ve all

Taught on the fly so that is exactly there it’s there for them to stop and say you don’t understand it we’re not going to go on with this lesson we’re going to talk about how we can do it better we can do a my map we’re going to

Do something different just to try and get that knowledge embedded we also have the opportunity to really go forward and look and think what books are we going to use what scholarship are we going to use how are we going to get them to access it what

Extracts are we going to use and how are we going to use it really planning ahead and really thinking ahead to the forth of what we need to do but the big thing I want to talk about for me the main focus is climate history because just this year think

About the temperatures and it’s been all over the news and it’s becoming a massive massive news story almost every day you see something about it you see the government rolling back on green policies other parties promoting green policies and it’s going to be the biggest challenge for mankind for the

Next 50 years and our kids our pupils that we’re in front of that’s what they’re going to be facing and when I really thought about it there’s a new book Peter frankopan and I feel like every time Peter frankopan brings out a book we’ve got to rewrite the curriculum it’s just a

Fact so I got his new Booker transformed and I sat down I read it and I thought I’ve never thought about this way but he’s right he points out that in the next 50 years it’s be the biggest challenge but climate has had a massive impact on mankind since the Stone

Age different historical events have sometimes been caused by climate so we can look in the past to figure out how we might figure out the future and think about what some of the impacts might be in the future most of us could probably name an individual a battle something that’s

Happened that has Changed History and been really significant been really important or cause something to happen how many people in this room could name a storm a natural event or a weather pattern that changed history and yet it has a massive impact one person has a massive impact so when I

Started this point there’s a medieval warm period there’s a period of about 300 years where the temperatures are lovely in Europe and most of the world and the population massively increases and and all of a sudden it’s already been mentioned with the the Witchcraft there’s a little ice age and that little

Ice Age causes huge amounts of Destruction desolation it leads to conflict over resources it leads to accusations of Witchcraft it actually causes the tends to freeze over every year and there’s a huge amount of change and what I read I read this book I was shocked to find out when the Europeans

Discover in America we brought to that indigenous population small pox and other diseases and and wiped out thousands of people all those cities particularly in the south of America got reclaimed by Nature those plants pulled more CO2 out the atmosphere and caused an ice Asian global temperatures to drop

That led to famines which led to Revolutions that led to rebellions that led to all kinds of issues all over and then as we move forward few time we can see how the relationship with nature changes again and nature become something not to be looked after to be

Something to be ruined to destroyed to be taken and then the impact of the British Empire animals are currently in the world not where they should be and the biggest example I saw for that was if you go to America honeybees do not belong in America the indigenous people

Of the Americas called honeybees English flies because we brought them with us to build Honeycombs and to feed ourselves huge parts of India should should not be growing tea parts of sh should not be growing tea we have spread diseases spread other things all across the planet and for me

With what’s going on the world now this is I think something that we need to start thinking about because for too long we’ve left it to geographers to talk about this and to scientists and there’s a big gap of saying well no history has its part to

Play how many historical events if you actually look at them are caused by the weather thanks very much everyone oh if anyone wants to have a chat I’ve got some of the resources we use and give us a follow and I’m happy to share anything

Than okay thank you for that um we are going to listen we are going to now hear from one of our sponsors H is that correct right now so if you’d like to come over Okay um just remind you all that um while we are doing this if you

Are on Twitter or X as it is now called please make sure you are using hashtag TM tmhi not the one I was told previously because it was Miss written on my piece of paper but we are now back to here on H you have to bend down

Do like a Freddy Mercury and just be Like sorry hi I’m I’m I’m the publisher for the history list um joined by sales representative Kelly go um basically I’m going to be talking about some of our new resources um that are out this year some of our recent resources and then K’s going to take

Over and talk about some of um the other services that we offer such as CPD uh magazines events of thing um just to say that obviously H really proud to sponsor this event it’s um up to at least three or four of these and um yeah for me this

Has been the best yet it’s great to see um you know such amazing talks and um yeah I’ve certainly learn a lot so yeah thanks to all the presenters okay so the new publishing um this is a series I feel massively passionate about um these are

My pride and joy my babies uh if you follow me on Twitter then I won’t sort of shut up about these ones um I commissioned these uh a good couple years ago now and that was a result of just going to conferences going to schools finding out what are the pain

Points that teachers are having and so many of them were really s struggling they wanted to do uh more diverse history more black history um LGBT but they were really scared because these things are controversial um you know say the wrong thing students going to Tweet

About it and then parents going to in and stuff like that um and there wasn’t really anything out there there wasn’t any decent resources really um you know a few a wild west online you can find worksheets or whatever but what they really needed was um a

Textbook um and so I I commissioned these three um and these are a series of Firsts really um again which I’m massively proud of U the British Empire um which published earlier this year in in March um this is the first book that has been which I know of anyway which

Has had um the input of 23 historians we work with um academics uh across the country um just on the British Empire to try and get that different perspective perspective of um from the colonize rather than colonizers we look at eight different regions across the world um

And the reason why we worked with so many historians is because we know it’s controversial um just go on Twitter you can see that so we just wanted to make sure that it was right and that you all felt confident um teaching about these areas um so that’s the first one the

Second one um this is the first because it’s the first ever um black British history textbook um from a major publisher um so that’s yeah truly groundbreaking and that’s written by uh ABD Muhammad and Robin Whitburn from Justice to history um they’re basically Pioneers when it comes to teaching black

History in secondary schools so um hopefully you have all heard of them but again um that’s that’s the first uh and then lastly um the British social history uh this published in May and again it was the first textbook to come out which covered lgbtq plus history disability

History um gypsy Roman traveler history um ethnicity gender it’s all in there and we’re looking at the 20th century from a different lens um basically uncovering voices which aren’t traditionally heard uh and again this book’s quite different as well because there are sections which sort lift the

Lid on how history is made so we’ve got interviews with archists we’ve got interviews with historians one of them which weirdly is actually um my Godfather’s daughter and she was at my Chris I don’t even know about that um but yeah she’s a leading Authority on JY

R travel history that’s Becky Taylor um so yeah I’m incredibly proud of these books um it really is showing that things are changing and that’s a really positive thing like moving away from that male pale scale history um so it’s it’s an exciting time to be working in

Publishing definitely um just to say that these are all accompanied by by online material which is free as well um because again it’s all about that confidence you know are you worried about certain terminology using the wrong thing um and and they are you know we recognize that youve spent ages and

Ages on your curriculum so what we don’t want to be doing is saying right yeah allio stuff’s rubbish check it out just use a textbook these are very much designed to be sort of slotted in um there various inquiries in there which you think okay well that could quite

Work well with my existing curriculum um so the flexible approach is really helpful um so yeah please do check those out we also had um when these books launched we had webinars um from the authors explain about the books and the approaches and things they considered

And how you go about teaching them um and they’re now on YouTube as well so if I haven’t told you yet uh do do look at those um yeah they’re really great webinars I learned a lot okay um also on diversity representation obviously I’m sure there’s not a single person in this

Room hav heard of black um I’ve known Miranda for a while now um and I work with her and Jason Todd to produce a series of inquiries based around her book and the good news is we no budget to type and this is absolutely free um yeah so do check that out if

You’re looking to embed um some inquiries on on the black cheers I’m not sure if anyone teaches uh igcc it is quite popular in in some schools in the country um for those that do I’m sure you that the spec has changed there’s been some updates so we

Just wanted to make sure we’ve got you covered there you got BW textbook um lots of online teaching and learning resources for our platform which Kelly will talk about stud revision guide workbooks whatnot um this is a new thing for which are only recently published and this was

Born out a lot of uh sort of research into existing revision guides that are out there and um what I found was that actually a lot a lot of the revision guides on the market are just sort of mini textbooks a lot of them just use use textbooks for potentially like we

Students and it’s just cramming all that information into squeezing into one page and that’s not really helping anyone um so I work with Dale banam he’s a bit of a pedagogical Mastermind um hope you heard of him um but it’s really about teaching kids not only what to

Learn but how how to how to revise so it’s very much a cognitive science based approach um you know looking at basically elements such as retrial practice dual coding all that kind of stuff that you’re familiar with um but making students realize that you’re not starting from scratch you know you you

Will have some knowledge and it’s about identifying what knowledge you do have and what you don’t where your weak areas are and how you can build on those um and these link to the engaging series that you might be familiar with if you teach AA GCC um so the compliment each

Other well but if you don’t use the engaging series you can still use these um it’s quite an Innovative approach so please do check them out stand um I’m just going to talk about some recent publishing um for the last couple years as well uh I don’t think anyone’s switched

Over from their Warfare or or Medic or um crime over to migration um yeah it’s it’s a great new course migrant in Britain of course um and again Robert ad from Justice to history uh there theyve written that book and the great thing about R AB is that they’re really

Passionate about the history but they they’re not relying on just you know books are out there and what not they are doing original research themselves they are going down into the archives they’re unearthing stories which haven’t been told before um so I do do really like the way that they’re so invested in

In covering new history as well um and then Sam has written the revision guide she’s been um teaching teaching the course for last couple years so again it’s all from her experience as well uh if you don’t do Ben watches then sorry uh these have gone down well as

Well um per I know you use use one of the books um and the idea with this is that Ben spent a lot of time um looking at schools which were struggling with the edl course to be honest they they had teachers who were just like I don’t

Know how to this content I can’t make this into a coherent course I’m running out of time I’ve got kids who just don’t care they’re switched off they should be getting the grades but they’re just overwhelmed um so he was like unpicking basically where they were going yeah

Where they’re going wrong what their misunderstandings were um and so Ben came up with this approach really um and it’s just trying to make it more engaging it’s getting students to S of get invested in the history so then so that actually switching on rather than switching off um they’re really cost

Effective as well I know bu just the time but what we’ve got here is um the book One covers all the the modern stuff so basically paper two period studies um the two most popular Cold War and American West uh and then the paper three

Germany U and then in book two we’ve got the sort of British stuff so the popular thematics which is crime and medicine and then the the most popular uh British death which um and sou nor England and eleth as well uh I don’t think anyone here does p

See but just to say that yeah we we do cover that as well with um two new textbooks and a revision guide common entrance um is another area which we cover again this was done actually commissioned by my um another colleague so I must I don’t much about

It but it’s there it’s there um this is just a quick slide like as you can see from our our desk you know we are number one history publisher something I’m very proud of um partly because of you know the great authors that we have and the rigorous um nature of our writing

Process um but it also is in part because we cover every board um so revision wise yeah it’s AQA edl O A and B educ wjc CCA Cambridge um cover there textbooks as well covered all GCC and igc textbooks um and a level as well so covers the publishing side of things oh

One more understanding um history key stage three proess a few years ago um under the SHP Banner schools history project um and it’s a great again cost effective solution it’s your entire keystage three course so prob be two year or three year covered in one book and that’s accompanied by um an

Assessment pack and B online learning I think that’s it okay so beyond those thank you you good afternoon everybody it’s lovely to see you all um I’m Kelly um I’m one of the sales consultants and I cover Hartford share ess6 and suffk and it’s lovely to see some of my schools today

So hi there um I’m going to talk to you about different resources other than books that we do because we have such a variety for history so the first thing I talk about is the magazine subscriptions that we do these are available as a print magazine um I’ve got the history Review magazine

With me today if you want to look at it not only is this available as a print magazine it’s also available as an emag the emag allows you to actually share the magazine digitally with your entire cohort of a level or GCS history students as well as the emag we offer an

E Library some of you may remember the old archives that we used to have running in our older platform Dynamic learning with the new e Library it now sits on its own platform at H education magazines not only do you get the back issues also as we produce the relevance

So for example September 2023 we bought out the new magazine this one here that will then automatically go onto the library so that is something new to mention to you and as I just said it’s available for a level and also for gcsc thank you now to talk to you a

Little bit about our CPD offering that we do um our range includes professional development webinars they’re actually online um if you wanted for example a head department and a couple of teachers you know after school um so we do professional development webinars these get emailed to you the next morning so

At 9 9 A.M the next morning the webinar that you’ve attended then you can share it with teachers that were not present with you it’s a fantastic value we also do professional development online workshops as well um inperson professional development events different areas across the country Manchester um Birmingham London in

Particular um we also now offer since coid downloadable professional development packs uh which are very very useful and once you downloaded it’s a oneoff purchase they’re yours um student revision webinars um with our student revision webinars again you can have a group of students um set up inside a hall um

Again the next morning that actually gets emailed to you and also you get to keep it for six months so it’s a great way of you sharing those resources we also run student with Vision days where you can take students out of the school um and the price is

Per head every 10 students you take you get a free teacher Place Great Value um guided assessment packs our Gap packs that we do um again these are downloadable resources on on our website build your own event now this is something bespoke that you we can offer

For you if you give us a guideline we can come into your school and deliver um events in school um you can have a half a day a full day so really the best thing to do is to contact us with your ideas with your thoughts what you would

Like us to be specific about for your teachers your students for example you can incorporate if you’re in an area with a few schools incorporate and bring other schools in spread the cost of that as well but it would be be spoke to your needs for your

Students what I recommend you do on our website we do send these out um these brochures or CPD everything is in here but it’s also on our website if you to click a link and you can just download it okay so that’s available for you too also to mention harder education now

Own John cat earlier on we were speaking about the retrieval practice that’s all in our John cat catalog um these cataloges should land in your pigeon holes but again if if you haven’t received one just please go to the website um the John cat website the John

Cat Bookshop I should say and all of the resources are on there but there’s four retrieval guides um you know that you can basically use which are all on there which I know that some of you have used and enjoyed using um next slide please I

Think that’s it oh no no boost so some of you will be familiar with our platform boost it’s a new generation platform boost actually contains um teacher and learning resources to help with delivery things such as PowerPoint schemes of work worksheets interactive tests self-marking gives you feedback

Not just score but also Gap analysis any misconceptions it will identify for you um we also have ebooks available to you as well um so yeah basically it’s a complete platform if anybody would like any free trials of our boo platform which will continue to grow as we bring

Out new resources there’ll be a boost product available for you um but yeah it’s fantastic it’s two two and a half years old now so that’s it for me I think I think that’s the last slide isn’t it yep ah last thing to mention to you so obviously because we’ve had the

Pleasure of your company today there’s my details there my email address there’s 25% discount off today so please do Main not of my email address and I can help any of you with your inquiries after today’s event thank you very much and a safe journey home when it

Happens okay I hold it for it right okay I’m sure you’ll be happy to know we’re going to have a very quick Comfort break before our final keynote speak but before you do few things just to remind you make sure you go around and have chat chat with all of our sponsors again

Without our sponsors this would not have happened if you would like some tickets for the raffle we have got some fabulous prizes if you go and see Tina who is standing at the back she can sell you tickets uh if you are going to do anything on X please make sure you’re

Using the hashtag um which is tmhi I have got that right finally got it right took me all day but shall we say a 10 minute Comfort break so we’ll be back about 20 uh qu two oh 22 let’s go for 22 okay no the cakes are mine I bought WAFF tiet I

TI where we put the money t I’m just doing it she doing it I I just spe you yeah every what many And job yeah Like Oh very this [Laughter] is you I Need spe yeah Yeah is that a com sorry is that com yes is he in yourart want me to do some spe right everyone will um we’ll crack on if everyone’s ready um um just a real sort of opportunity for me to say massive thanks to everyone for coming to the event today um because it

Is a Saturday and um I think our sort of mission since 2015 has been um free events um and that that’s s far e aome the live streams available for free the recording will be available for free to everybody I will email that everyone who’s attended today um um tomorrow so

Then if you want to share that with anybody they can sign up for the recording as well of the event today um so it’s just been amazing so thanks so much for coming that’s the first thing I will say at the very end a massive thanks to the team goes without saying

Who put this together it’s been it’s been outstanding but I hate that word it’s been excellent um uh I was also going to say a huge I mean I’ve mentioned the fact that we we’re probably the only sort of national provider that provides as much free stuff in terms of events

And um you know and that’s really been Central to what we’ve tried to do for classroom teachers since we started um I’m still teaching history so this has sort of been really valuable for me as well and to be able to be here and take some things away in between um panicking

About technology and everything else um the sponsors are integral to that we we are a sponsor funded event um without the sponsor supporting us we wouldn’t be able to to do what we’re doing now um with with the venue the food the the live stream the technology everything

That goes into it the team behind it everything so a massive massive thanks to Collins to H to Oxford University press and also time travel education who can’t unfortunately be year today they’ve sponsored every event every history event we’ve run since 2016 so when when I started this and I was at

That time teaching in um Warrington something and um and you know we we were sort of just trying to start this from scratch and Nick from time travel and I can’t even remember how I got talking to him but he was just straight away like yeah we’ll we’ll

Sponsor we’ll support and they at that time were were a small business you know a local sort of business and they said yeah we’ll we’ll come on board we’ll support you um and that was the first event we run of this in 2016 in Chester um in in a hotel in Chester and

Obviously we wouldn’t have been able to put it on um without them every event since they they supported it which I think is is amazing um you know and that’s sort of mirrored by all the sponsors in the room today Dave you know Dave continued to support us over the

Last number of years so it’s amazing um really is but yeah I’m just going to play this video we’re not going to listen to the sound like I’m going to talk about time travel while you watch the images um but Nick and sergeant Parsons um who is the guy who comes with

Nick um who dresses up as an army Sergeant and comes into your school and shouts and Barks things at everybody and wears all the original stuff um this guy Richie um he’s great he’s great with the students he’s a great laugh but also he knows his stuff time travel have also

Got these VR kits you can actually buy them into the school and they bring I think it’s like a 100 VR headsets and then they got like World War One trenches on there they’ve got like all these all these sort of immersive experiences um that’s that’s one of the

Things they do is they go into schools but their main sort of bread and butter is their is their Educational Tours and visits um now I mentioned Nick earlier he’s such a nice guy and I’m not just saying that he really is like such a

Nice guy like he will go out of his way he will talk to you on the phone he will answer your question it will be him not you know he won’t be referring to someone else um he’s just so sort of Hands-On it’s his it’s his company it’s

His baby and he he will go out of his way for you as a history teacher head of History assistant head teacher whatever level it is to help you arrange a trip to to France to Germany to to anywhere you want to go um within their sort of

Offer obviously super handy for western front uh gcsc uh particularly um anything on on medicine anything around that area um obviously they they cover all of that within their Western Front trips and much more um that’s everything that’s included um itinerary full guided trip um create a payment plan to suit

You and your school support pre-or parents evenings for residentials pre World War One Workshop group leader support um is also offered by them and I think that is true of them from every single person I’ve spoken to it’s not just what we do it’s How We Do It um so

Yeah they’re excellent um I think do you know what St I don’t think we need to say anymore I don’t know what else is on the video um VR mentioned it um really good they’ve got a preview on their website where you can see what it looks like for

The students and it does look really cool actually um and there Richie bson we can’t hear him um but he he is a character if you’ve been to any of our events before he rocks up looking like that and sort of sh to people in their

Faces all day it’s really great and and again great guy just a great you know they’re both from sort of laner and they’re both just just great guys um and hopefully maybe in the future you’ll get to meet them if you come come to another one of these in the future that they’re

Usually hanging around so check out time travel check out all our other sponsors thanks very much for for you know uh sort of supporting the event by by coming today again and now I’m going to pass over to one to introduce our final speaker okay our final speaker is

Professor Allison Rollins it is our final keynote speaker for today don’t worry we are going to do the raffle at the end I promise we are doing the raffle we’re just GNA sort it all out it’ll do right at the end so Alison Professor Allison sorry is Professor of European history at univers

Of and she’s going to come talk to you about was it history history of not history of Witchcraft fantastically actually if you come to my classrooms you may see but here we go thanks very much yeah I always begin my uni modules by reassuring the students that it’s the history of

Witchcraft not the actuality of practicing witchcraft um before I get to my uh presentation just a couple of things to say relating to earlier speakers uh one um was uh Sean Kelly’s name was mentioned he’s a colleague of M essics uh he’s one of the main movers

And Shapers in that big slave voyages data set that was referred to um I’m sure if you dropped an email you very happy to uh talk to you about that or or come and talk to your school about that um the other thing I was going to say was um in relation

Sorry sorry magic intervening um uh the the other thing I was just going to say was in relation to history and careers that old what can I do with a history degree question is something we’re faced with at universities open days at busy days um all I would say to reassure your

Pupils your students is all the careers that were up on that pie chart you can do with a history degree uh one the things we do a lot of work work uh at at University level is enabling students to articulate the skills they develop as historians so all of those really

Positive things communication research critical analysis uh independent thinking teamwork we we do a lot of work with them and our Career Services to enable them to articulate those skills so I think there’s a really kind of somewhere this unhelpful idea that history restricts you has somehow got into the

Uh student mix and and I think more we can do to reassure uh people who really love history and are interested in it you can do a non-history degree um having done a history degree and then keep up your historical interest uh through through other mechanisms anyway

Enough of that let’s let’s whiz back to the 17th century uh what I’m going to try and do today I’m going to try and do too much so you can critique my presentation y I’m trying to do too much I’ve got too many slides okay so I’ve lowered your

Expectations L uh I’m going to talk about the East Ang Witch Trials uh and on the advice of St who’s one of my lovely alumni from eics uh I’m going to uh try and uh set out a possible key stage three five to six lessons that you

Might do on the East angangan Witch Trials now you know a lot better than I whether any of this will work so I apologize in advance if the ideas I’m suggesting are over ambitious or just pie in the sky but hopefully some of the things I say might be interesting you

Might be able to take some of them away to adapt them in your own teaching also if you’re doing the a level um witchcraft paper you might find some of the things that say about what’s going on in East Anglia in the mid 17th century interesting

Anyway okay so I had a look at the uh National curriculum before I started we’re very privileged at Uni that we don’t have to worry about our national curriculum we have subject benchmarks which are much more about key skills but the substantive material through which we deliver those skills is left uh much

More to our own devices and I got a sort of feeling that you guys have a little bit more rle room at keystage three to uh teach a little bit more perhaps flexibly or perhaps more flexible assessment as well uh so I was going to suggest you might be able to link this

Uh East angland witch TR material to key stage three as a loal study and it obviously links to that broader theme of uh British history uh in the um period 1509 to 1745 um I’ll talk a little bit about those thank you step always do what your

Ex students tell you uh okay so focus a little bit of focus on these Concepts significance cause consequence continuity and change complexity but I think there are some words missing from there I think empathy is hugely important that’s been mentioned I think historical perspective is hugely important and that’s been

Mentioned and I think imagination is very very important and that doesn’t seem to be in there so I’m going to try and try and bring those in as well I’m going to give you some quite concrete suggestions for sources um I always when I teach this stuff give

Trigger warnings some of it is quite disturbing there are pictures of people being hanged references to torture um I think you know we can sometimes underestimate how affected students could be by some of this um so the the weird groom thing is a trigger warning um so what I really try and do

Um in this presentation is get away from the idea that it was all about Matthew Hopkins okay now there are very good reasons that people think these sang Witch Trials were all about Matthew Hopkins uh one of which was the 1968 film witch finder General um and the

Kind of the the legacy of that and if you go to Manning tree nowadays I don’t know if you can see it very well but on the top part of the Town sign of Manning tree lo and behold who is there Matthew Hopkins and I think you can broaden this

Idea out to other periods and themes in history so thinking about how much one individual shapes certain events what motivates them um how far it’s perhaps a bit a bit lazy to say it was all down to that person uh because it sort of uh you

Know means we don’t have to do too much Thinking Beyond that so I really want to uh try and encourage uh students to to think Beyond this sort of monocausal blaming of one individual now the East anglian Witch Trials are very significant in and of themselves so

They are the largest episode of witch persecution in English History they’re pretty small beer compared to European Witch Trials so early modern Germany executes 25,000 people early modern England executes 500 so if you did a big European wide comparison uh in England is is relatively um sort of small scale

But in in the English context um the the E angan wit trials are very significant so around a hundred people uh as far as we know the sources aren’t all brilliant they aren’t all uh they haven’t all survived uh at least 100 people mainly women are executed between 1645 and

1647 so about a fifth of that whole total of 500 are executed in our region in about two and a half year period the two largest group executions in English history of witches happen in East Anglia at this time 15 people are executed here in chelsford in July

1645 18 people are executed in Baris Edmunds in August 1645 so the largest mass executions of which has happen at this time in East Anglia and we’ve also got this very very unusual phenomenon of the witch finders and there are two of them Matthew Hawkins is one John Stern

Is the other and not only do they both take this role upon themselves but they also write books about their experiences they try and defend their actions in print and therefore we have this very very unusual and very valuable Source material we actually can see and read the words of the witch

Finders so this is my plan no idea if it would work throw throw Rotten Tomatoes at me at the end if it doesn’t so I’ve decided we’d start with some context uh we’d start with some understanding of Witchcraft and how it was prosecuted why it was prosecuted why

In Earth has everybody worked up about this talk a little bit about why things start talk a bit about what motivated the witch finders but also really really importantly what about the victims where are their voices where are their uh feelings where do they fit into this narrative and then and then some

Assessments at the end I I’ve suggested that might run over six sessions but as I say I really am not an expert so uh you might think that’s far too much uh you might want to stretch over more lessons or perhaps just pick one or two

Of them uh for your own for your own purposes now it’s a really strange topic witchcraft it’s very very alien to the vast majority of our students they don’t get it it’s bizarre how could people believe in magic how could people think you could kill someone with a curse how

Could someone think you could have sex with the devil I mean it’s just very very strange stuff so I think it really helps to invest some time in understanding belief systems and understanding religion and again these can be quite a Concepts to uh pupils at school nowadays and obviously they don’t

Have to agree with these they don’t have to believe in them but they do need to try and it is hard and it’s fine to be honest about that history is a difficult subject trying to understand different belief systems that is the root of an empathetic approach to history which is

Why I actually think teaching Witchcraft and Witch Trials can be very useful because you have to practice trying to understand very different beliefs from your own so what do we know that about 17th century England well religion is hugely important and it’s not just a set of

Beliefs it’s an entire world view people believe that their material world is absolutely suffused with Supernatural spiritual and religious energy beings and significance and they genuinely think think witches can harm them they they believe that black witchcraft is the power to do harm through magic but what’s even worse they also believe that

That witchcraft is a religious crime it’s a crime against God that’s why they take it so seriously it’s not a marginal thing and I tend when I teach this topic to completely avoid the term superstition these aren’t superstitions these are profoundly held beliefs from the Monarch down to the peasantry okay

Everybody believes in this pretty much so these aren’t popular beliefs or superstitions they are a world viiew within which witchcraft is feared uh and therefore it’s something you need to take action against and that matters because it’s also a crime people executed for witchcraft are tried in courts of

Law the trials that they undergo are riddled with what we would regard as abuses and and very very problematic procedures but by the context of the day they are tried in courts of law according to statutes so this is not mob Justice this is a legal process so it

Matters to the educated governing Elites of of our uh early modern European countries because they go to the of passing laws against it there’s a very good online Link to I’m not going to follow all the links don’t worry but there’s a good online link to the 1604 witchcraft statute many

Of you probably use that or know of it um I just think it’s worth mentioning that to students you know this is a law of the land passed by parliament ratified by the Monarch which says witches should be hanged if they kill people um you could if you want to and

Again I’m not going to go through you can look at the slides if you would like to um this is a a section from the uh statute which looks at paragraph two and again depending on the ability of your of your students you might get them to

Look at that as an extract or pick out a couple of sentences students really find this quite exciting they realized in the 17th century there was no consistency in spelling you didn’t know how to you didn’t have to know how to punctuate and gets them very very excited and it often

Gets them really really baffled and bafflement is a good starting point as a histor you want to know why you want to know what what on Earth is this is this about what does it mean uh so essentially this paragraph is saying uh someone is going to suffer Pains of

Death I.E it’s a capital crime if they practice exercise uh any invocation or conjure any evil or Wicked spirit Spirits or employ feed or reward any evil spirits uh whereby any person is killed destroyed uh or laned in his or her body or any part thereof so that really gets

You to the half this belief system harmful magic and Consulting with evil spirits that’s what it’s about and it’s there in the Statue and if the court finds you guilty you are going to be executed that’s an image of of um Mid 17th century women being hanged to

Witchcraft we don’t have any images of this from the East angan Witch Trials there’s only one image from the East Danel in Witch Trials which I’ll show you shortly I’m sure you’re all familiar with it this is from um the latest 1640s in Newcastle shows the women being hanged and probably another unknown

Witch finder being paid for his labor in the corner there and that’s just a table showing you a comparison and there are two witchcraft statutes passed in England one in 1563 and then that one is made more severe by King James I first in 16004 but it just really reminds us

That this is very much a legal framework that we are dealing with you can talk to students about the witch is familiar this is the evil spirit or imp the statute was referring to and this is the very first print image of a witch is familiar in English

History it’s from a pamphlet published about the three women who tried witchcraft um they were all from Hatfield peal in essic one of them was executed um and this pamphlet was the first um witchcraft trial pamphlet that was that was published uh in print in England and it came out in

1566 and the the the chat who was printing it tried to imagine what a demonic dog would have looked like and usually when students see that they laugh they just think it’s so silly ridiculous and stupid and it is in our eyes but we need to remember going back

To that statute that people at the time thought this was an incarnation of the devil the Demonic the evil and it was helping the witch to do her harmful magic so again it looks a bit daed to us but we need to get our heads around what people are the believed about

It I won’t bore you with all that detail do have a look at it in your own time if you want to it just shows you the legal process so basically most people accused of Witchcraft in England are accused in their local community they are then taken before a

Local Justice of the Peace that’s a a local gentleman and if that local gentleman who incidentally doesn’t always necessarily have any legal training his main qualific ation for that role is his landed wealth and his masculinity not necessarily the best qualification for making life and death decisions about anybody um if he decides

There is a case to answer that suspect is taken to a local jail held in unspeakably horrible conditions until the assise courts come into town they come into town twice a year very often asign trials are held here in sheler asiz courts usually held in the largest counter toown a particular

County um so when you hear about the chelsford witch trials they are not Trials of people from chelsford for witchcraft they are Trials of people from other parts of Essex who have been brought to chumford for the asiz courts most of them come from uh other towns and Villages mainly villages in other

Parts of eics and that would be the same for any uh County is uh that we look at and if sent to child the wi is charged and a little indictment or charge sheet is drawn up against them you could show your students an example of a charge sheet just to

Reassure them that there is legal you know this is this is a legal process for which there’s evidence this is the one of the charges brought against Elizabeth Clark who Atari has already mentioned she’s the first person to be accused in Ang witch trials in Manning tree and

This is the charge brought against us this is the formal document that we have about Elizabeth Clark’s trial she’s called Elizabeth Clark of manri spinster on the 25th of June in 1645 in Manning Tre she Bewitched John Edwards the infant son of Richard Edwards of Manning Tre a gentleman who languished

That’s the son until the 5th of July following when he died at Manning tree and that’s endorsed in other in other words people are willing to um support that allegation as Witnesses by Matthew Hopkins John Stern Richard Edwards Susan Edwards Robert Taylor and Edward parsley these were originally drawn up in

Latin uh but there’s a very um good if very old um English edition of these indictments uh that that you can uh that you can see these in you could ask students what does it tell us it gives us the bare bones of the charge against Elizabeth but it really doesn’t tell us

Much about her socioeconomic status the status of her accusers the tensions behind that accusation the backstory if you like so indictments are very very short factual bits of information necessary documents charging someone with a crime uh but there’s a heck of a lot missing we do not have in England very good

Sources for the history of Witchcraft compared my main research is actually on on German Witch Trials German Witch Trials I’ve got some 17th century cases where I have 900 pages of written testimony it’s a lot more than an indictment but we have some evidence for the English witch Tri and the main

Difference there was because English Justice was still largely done orally and therefore we don’t get that that amount of written uh written evidence that’s an indictment it’s helpful but there’s still a lot missing i’ then talk a bit about context and obviously I think the key context

This is where you can start linking things back to the National you know the national legislation uh the the political tensions religious divisions of the Civil War we know East Anglia is very much dominated by Puritans and parliamentarians but it still has some pocket of Catholicism and I think it’s

Important to remember that people at the time conceptualized the Civil War as like a cosmic battle between good and evil if you weren’t with us you were against us so Puritans regard the king the royalists the Catholics The Witches they’re all ungodly others who could do with persecuting and there’s a really

Interesting um sort of explosion of print culture and print literature at this time and this is an image of Prince Rupert of the Ry the leader of the royalist Cavalry uh and a lot of the Puritan propaganda um argues that Prince rert is actually uh a magician a sorcerer and we

Know this because he has a demonic dog uh this is his poodle dog who was called boy apparently a genuinely unusual German breed of dog which she brought over with him uh in in the mid uh in the mid 17th century and if you want to go down a rabbit hole uh in

Relation to Prince rer and his demonic dog uh there’s a link there to to a website but this um this sort of discussion of familiars can really engage some students so uh it’s quite interesting that you know somebody that you would normally think would be completely protected from any suspicion

Of Witchcraft a man a nobleman a relative of the king because of the Civil War and because of this fear of the ungodly um he becomes tainted as well with this suspicion of Witchcraft he’s never actually prosecuted but it plays into these fears that are articulated in uh in print

Culture um so very quickly then what’s actually happening and I think this goes back to some of the earlier discussions today about substantive knowledge there are a lot of generalizations about Witch Trials there are a lot of assumptions out there about Witch Trials Witch Trials every single

Witch trial has a beginning a middle and an end and therefore understanding the the secet of events why things happened why they start why they carry on why they finally come to and I think you know really really matters uh so the events of 1645 to 7 start in March

1645 Elizabeth Clark is arrested in Manning Tre the final trials are in 1647 they begin in essic spread to suffk Norfork Cambridge Northampton huntingon and the IR of eely um the county worst affected is actually suffk followed by Essex and norford other Counties have smaller episodes the trials are by far the worst

In 1645 and they’ve run out of steam by 1647 so it reminds us that they are particular to times and places and again I think that really helps students situate historical events in context time matters and place matters as well that’s the map from the very good book that I think Atari mentioned

Malcolm gaskill’s uh book called witch finders and he he shows some of the places the witch finders went to on that map um why do they start in Manning tree well there are very particular local circumstances um and it’s not just to do with the witch finders there are lots of other local

Powerful men who are in favor of which prosecution witch finding is not an official thing there’s no there’s no kind of job description to be a witch finder there’s no official legal position of being a witch finder basically Matthew Hopkins and John Stone join in once the witch trials are

Starting so we have two local legal officials the justices of the peace and we have powerful local men like the chat Richard Edwards that we looked at briefly in the indictment we have lots of powerful local men very much in favor of finally getting rid of suspected

Witches and it’s in that context that mat Hopkins and John Stern who were both puran gentlemen living in in Manning tree at the time they get involved and volunteer their services that’s how it all starts in Manning tree and Elizabeth Clark the first woman accused is a very easy

Target she’s poor old and one-legged and we are told that her own mother and other kins folk were executed as witcheries so she’s probably from a family of reputed black witches and that reputation is very hard to Escape uh and it seems likely that the community in manry seizes the moment

Seizes the opportunity of the Civil War to finally in their eyes try and get rid of this feared Local woman again I won’t go through this in much in much detail Matthew Hopkins originally from suff from great wenam um a younger son no real career path mapped out for him relatively young

He’s born in 1620 so he’s only in his mid to early to mid 20s when when he gets involved in the witch trials so that earlier image of Vincent Price in the film way too old he was about 30 years too old for the role of Matthew Hopkins um but there’s been some

Interesting research that was done in 2008 um I’ve listed all the literature on the final slide um what Francis timers did in this article from 2008 was actually explain why on Earth was mat Hopkins in Manning tree that’s always been a bit of a mystery why does this

Younger son from from suff end up in Manning tree well Timbers I think has shown Beyond doubt it was because Hopkins father who was a Puritan Minister has died and his mother remarries and his mother remarries the the local uh recor Thomas witam of Manning Tre and mle so that’s why

Hopkins ends up in Manning tree and that really matters for another reason because um it it means that Hopkins is related by marriage to Richard and Susan Edwards those early accusers of Elizabeth Clark so Susan Edwards is the son of Thomas wron by his first wife so Matthew Hawkins and Susan Edwards are

Effectively sort of Step siblings so it seems if you read the Hopkins text he talks about his fear of witches the sect of witches living in man injury attacking him uh plaguing him and his family and maybe that that’s reflecting the the real concerns of Richard and

Susan Edwards for uh for their children for the for the death of their child so this uh research by timers has really helped to situate Hopkins in the manry context much more effectively if he hadn’t become a witch finder we wouldn’t know anything about him really he’s fairly insignificant

Otherwise he dies of TV in 1647 just after writing his book explaining why he was a witch finder and that’s the only image that we have of anything to do with East angland Witch Trials from the time and it’s from his own publication he wrote uh his his book in

1647 uh and that’s how he wants us to remember him and it could be really interesting with students to ask how would they read that image what what image do you think Hopkins was trying to portray of himself and what on Earth is going on otherwise and actually what’s

Going on in the foreground is we’ve got two of his victims uh Elizabeth Clark indicated by the arrow we’ve got two of his victims he’s interrogating them and they are supposedly confessing to having these demonic familiars these imps these evil spirits and they are uh portrayed at the front of the picture

There uh with their rather Fantastical names and the eagley amongst you might notice that there’s a demonic dog in the middle there that looks a bit like uh the pood dog boy uh but again it’s very much this very English belief in uh witchcraft uh at the witch being in

League with a harmful uh uh familiar we must forget John Stern John Stern really gets missed out a of a lot of these stories not because I want to glorify him but just to say he was a second witch finder he was very very similar to Hopkins he was from suffk he

Was a Puritan he was a minor gentleman and again we only know of him because he becomes a witch finder and he also writes a book about what he did in 1648 he’s older than Hopkins he’s married he has a family home of Edmunds and for some reason again which we don’t

Quite know why he happened to be in Manning Tree in 1645 and he jumped on the uh witch finding bandwagon along with Hopkins then so why don’t things just stop then if things start in in Manning tree why why do they end up spreading across the Eastern counties what are the mechanisms

There and I think that can really help students understand how our phenomena move across uh across time and space um horribly uh because this Essex phase this early phase was very successful at least in the eyes of the witch finders so um of 29 Essex women tried here in

Chelsford um only one was acquitted the rest Prof found guilty sentenced to hang uh nine of those were approved and pardoned although most of them died in jail anyway so it wasn’t quite as positive as it might sound uh 19 end up being executed 15 here in chelsford and

Four back in M trees so that encourages other communities interested perhaps in in witch finding that it might actually be worth having a go at and very crucially our witch finders get on their horses and they travel into suffk if they stayed put then again maybe it wouldn’t have spread but Hopkins and

Stern really matter because they are the ones who move things by becoming geographically mobile first of all traveling into suffk and then elsewhere in the Eastern counties and they are offering their services they are growing into this role it’s very much of the moment it’s very opportunistic without that particular

Set of circumstances it could probably not have happened it’s nothing that they’ve land how could they but they seize the day and they offer their services and their expertise and some communities not all but some communities across these anging counties call them in deal with our witches deal with our

Problem not all some resist but this is what spreads The Witch Trials uh and the accusations across the Eastern counties and they feel like they they they enable communities to go public with their suspicions and this is where we come I think the very disturbing aspects of

This because the reason these trials are deemed to be successful the reason that the witch finders get people to confess is because they are effectively torturing them into confession now torture isn’t technically allowed in English law so what Hopkins and Stern do they call searching and

Watching and that sounds a bit of a euphemistic perhaps but it actually means stripping suspects uh naked uh Hopkins and Stern don’t do it incidentally it would have been completely inappropriate as men as Pur and gentlemen they get local women to do this for them uh so lots of women actually act as

Searchers uh and the Searchers examine the bodies of these suspects and also prick any unusual marks with sharp instruments see if they’re unnatural uh and the watching was also a team effort watching basically meant sleep deprivation you would take your suspects tie them to a chair deprive

Them of sleep food water for for a couple of days and and very often inevitably people would confess and again you get a team of local people in to help you with that you can’t do searching on your own as a witch finder you can’t do watching so this

Reflects the level of communal involvement in these uh in these Witch Trials and again you might think you know why would you do this is this sadism is is this misogyny what’s going on is it the power of the fear of The Witch uh what do you think I think it’s

Always a you know there are always these really good moments where you can get some uh some discussion going but which Trials come to an end they don’t go on forever they don’t spread everywhere so we need to remember the the dangers of generalizing as historians you know we always need to

Qualify what we’re saying so Hopkins and Stern once they move away from essics and suffer they have a much less sympathetic reception people don’t know who they are people are affronted by their arrogance by their alleged claims to Authority and also popular enthusiasm declines once communities realize it

Costs money to do witch finding youve got to pay witch finers you got to pay jail fees for poor suspects and we know for example in suff that the enthusiasm of local communities declines once uh people realize it’s going to cost them quite a bit of money it’s nothing to do

With belief at that stage it’s to do with the practicalities of which persecution and there are also some critical voices raised so again we need to remember that not everybody think thinks which persecution is a good idea culturist dor Council in 1645 tells the witch finders to take a hike uh there’s

A minister in Huntington who preaches against Hopkins in 1646 and the justices of the peace in norfor are uh critical of Hopkins in 1647 so again it’s not a simple story of everybody being on board with what was going on on and Hopkins has got TB and he dies

Becomes very ill and dies in 1647 and that really takes the wind out of the witch finder sails when he uh when he uh dies so again it’s it’s again a hideous phenomenon but a relatively and I use that tovis a relatively short lived one and there’s a lot of reaction against it

Afterwards uh those are just the title pages of um a couple of texts that’s the one by the uh hunting D critic John Gul that’s the title page of Hopkins own book and it’s very interesting because it’s called the discovery of witches but if you show it

To students and ask them to have a think about what the title is saying it’s a very long title it actually says in answer to several queries and those queries are criticism so basically Hopkins goes into print just before he dies while he’s very ill because he

Wants to defend himself so we get these criticisms of Hopkins because he replicate he reprints them in his in his own book because he’s trying to answer them I think you could then have a couple of sessions on on motivation trying to understand what motivates people in the past and I think that

Speaks to some of the earlier papers that we’ve had about historical perspective about getting individual voices about trying to understand big abstract Concepts through examples uh you know you might ask your students to write down a list what do they think was motivating the witch finders uh give me your top three or

Your top five um and you know you can then share them and see which ones crop up most often and I tend to find that students often explain motivation using perhaps more modern understandings you know they were in it for the money that they were misogynists um and you know

That’s an interesting uh starting point for discussion but we might also want to think about 17th century belief systems about harmful magic and the fear that witches were actually in League with the devil and we have to try although it’s very difficult to take that seriously um and again you know lots of

Things might come out of that Financial greed ambition hatred of women sense of Duty uh that can be a very interesting exercise to see to see what your what your students think doing their bit in the fight against evil remember the Civil War context uh you could also look at what

The witch finders say about this so this is where we do have this really really exceptional opportunity to take the students right in to the primary sources we can get at what Matthew Hopkins and John Stern said about what they were doing whether we believe them or not is

Clearly another big question but um I I think the um discovery of wites by mat Hopkins is very good on this because he gives the criticism and then gives his answer to it and there’s a there’s a good and again the link is there there’s a good uh easily navigable online

Version of his publication it’s a relatively short publication the only drawback of it is it doesn’t reproduce that nice um image um if you want to see the title page in the image the British Library holds uh one of the original copies of his book uh but this is an example and

Again I won’t go through in too much detail but it’s criticism 14 all witch finder does is fleece the country of their money uh and therefore rides and goes about to towns to have him employment so you know you can get students to think what is he actually

Being accused of do you get the early modern language there what what is Hopkins being accused of in relation to motivation and what opinion do you think that critic had of the witch f is what can you get out of that passage uh that would help help you understand contemporary criticisms of uh

Hopkins and that’s quite a long answer from mat Hopkins but this is his own words in response to that criticism um and again I’m not going to go through all of it but again you could ask the students to think about how he’s trying to defend himself uh but it’s quite interesting

That in trying to do that he gives us some quite interesting evidence about how he actually did his witch finding he talks about riding around uh with a company with three horses and charging 20 Shillings of conviction so actually ironically his defense of that allegation gives us some quite

Intriguing information about what he actually did that Sterns text I won’t say too much about it’s much much much longer than Hopkins and it’s much less clearly structured in that Q&A format so um I think it’s a lot harder to use uh in teaching but I’ve just given you a link

To a copy of it in case in case you’re in interested um and you might ask your students you know how much the witch finders matter um I suggested some ideas there uh you know that their nobility matters a lot their coercive interrogation tactics matter a lot uh but I don’t

Think that they could have done this without the context of the Civil War and I think it’s really really important to remember and again this is a lesson or an idea that you can take into many other different um themes and topics in the curriculum uh you know there are lots of

Other people in East Anglia in the midth century without Whom The Witch Trials could never have started and certainly could never have been as uh horrific so local justices of the peace the lawm makers the judges of the assis courts the jurymen the people willing to accuse and act as Witnesses

In charmford in 1645 92 people from Essex rocked up in court to testify against the witches not just Hopkins not just Stern 92 men and women from essics were so concerned about these women that they went to court to testify against them um and as I said before watching

And searching inevitably needed the help of local women in the cas of searching and also local men in uh in the case of this this watching but I think it’s super important I was really glad I I noticed from atari’s presentation that that some of the accused women were being uh were

Being looked at and I think that’s so so important for us uh for us to do and I think this is where you know we really need to exercise empathy imagination as well as I don’t think that should be regarded as something instead of but as well as close consideration of context close

Consideration of evidence um and and the two always have to go together so what might it have been like to be suspected accused of Witchcraft questioned searched watched arrested and held prisoner I don’t think you can answer any of those questions and you certainly can’t answer any of them very

Effectively without empathy and without imagination hopefully none of us are ever going to be in that position it’s very very difficult and this applies to all of the things that we study in the past we’re never going to know what it was like to be a 14th century peasant or

A 19th century Russian surf or Martin Luther we just can’t do that so so we always have to exercise empathy and Imagination I think it’s uh you know a useful subject through which uh through which to do this and I think again perhaps with keystage three having a

Little bit more space for sort of stepping back and considering these sorts of issues it might be quite a useful moment to do this and I think it’s something as well that can get students very excited about history it’s not just dates and kings and queens and it’s not just writing loads and

Everything it’s real people real people who really matter um and you know are Duty in a way as historians is to take them just as seriously uh you know as we take James James the first who uh you know ultimately was responsible for the statute against the uh against the

Witches so um you know one thing I try to do as students is taken to cultur Castle um because we know that the women from um the northeast corner of a were held there they weren’t tried there they were brought here to Chelmsford for trial at these sizes but they were held

Uh for many weeks in abysmal conditions in cult it’s one of the few buildings where we can say with certainty you know this building had an absolutely verifiable link to the witch persecution uh four of them die of the plague because the conditions are so appalling and that’s probably

Incidentally why culture toor accounts have said no more witch finding it was because they didn’t believe in witchcraft or they weren’t concerned about witchcraft their main issue apart from the Civil War was the loom threat of a plague epidemic in the town because they had a monumentally overcrowded Jail

Uh but that you know just just just to try and help that imaginative empathetic process some of that uh field work I think can be can be very valuable um I was involved between 21 and 22 in a really really interesting uh project with a a digital artist a an

Author called Sid Moore and lots of local women volunteers from Essex and we used digital art and pieces of creative writing to try and reimagine the stories of the 36 women who were accused of Witchcraft in essics in 1645 we wanted to shift the emphasis away from the men

Away from the witch finders and we wanted to create kind of a memorial to the accused women we don’t know much about them we have scraps of evidence in the pamphlets um in the indictment in um particularly Stern’s account but to some extent Hopkins account where they make specific

Reference to some of the suspects uh but there are lots of gaps and as historians you know we need to think what do we do with the gaps do we ignore them do we try with very very historically grounded imagination to make up some of those You

Know cover some of those gaps Bridge some of those gaps and that’s what we’re trying to do in that project it was very very interesting I was there as the uh as as the historian I hesitate to use the word expert because I don’t really

Think I am uh Sid was there as a creative writer Sean was there as the digital artist and the local volunteers were there as the the amazing enthusiasts and it was just so amazing the questions they asked you know someone was saying well I I’m I’m writing the backstory of one of the

Women and and I’ve got her in a kitchen in Manning tree would she have been peeling a potato in 1637 and I can safely say in all of my academic career you know these These are really challenging questions so we had a massive discussion about you know when

The potato arrived in England would it actually reach and and so it really made them think about the authentic or as near as to authentic as we ever going to get sort of context of these things and it really made me think about the sorts of questions that we need to think about

When we thinking about uh people in the past um and I wanted to show you this image this is the uh image that one of the project volunteers Drew um in in sort of CounterPoint to the Hopkins image and it’s some of the accused women of manry in the local Villages and

They’re sitting underneath a very famous tree you may have heard of it’s called Old noly it’s near Manning tree has nothing whatsoever to do with the witch trials historically but it’s become associated with them uh in in sort of historical myth so quite a lot of the

Work I was doing with this local study was telling people what we could say was historically grounded but also trying to explain my other myths and ideas have have grown up around this very very emotive and very contentious topic um and and it was a a really interesting learning experience for me as

Well um this is a link to the 1645 essic witch trial pamphlet which is quite a good link because it’s subdivided by uh accused person the testimony they gave the statements they gave and I just want to finish off by diving into some testimony about one of the accused

Women uh so this gives us some sense in as far as we’re ever going to really get as close as we can to the accusations to the beliefs and the fears of the time uh you know this is one way of one way of doing it um the victim the accused woman

Is from my own home community of women in essics uh she she was called Mary Johnson she was married she was the wife of a man called Nicholas Johnson a sailor from women home which is an estery Community She’s accused of having three familiars three evil spirits two in the

Shape of rats and one like a mouse and She’s accused of killing two children two two-year-old children and you know I think that really takes all of these kind of ideas about witches and all the kind of big massive explanations you know it was due to the Reformation or it

Was due to uh population growth it really gets you to the level of individual fear individual emotion and uh you know neighborhood tension uh all Mary says is that she’s innocent she denies the accusations she’s taken to culture Castle then she’s brought to chanc for trial she was

Convicted um but reprieved but she probably died in jail anyway so it reminds us that even if you’re not executed the impact of a wit prosecution could be hugely devastating anyway um and on the PowerPoint I’ve just taken out the pamphlet extract the pamphlet is a is a written account of

The verbal trial testimony um and these are often written and published after which trials early modern England because they’re very Sensational they’re very newsworthy you can sell a lot of them so they’re quite problematic because they are uh destined for sale however they’re as close as we’re

Ever going to get in the English context to actually what went on in court because it was all done uh verbally so without these pamphlets we’d know next to nothing about early modern English witchcraft because the legal system is still uh predominantly oral so you could give your students one or

More of these extracts and ask them you know what was she accused of who’s accusing her how was she even meant to be able to work her harmful magic what was going on can you get at the beliefs in the testimony and what do the extracts tell

Us about the fears and beliefs about witchcraft from the accuser’s point of you we talk about the witch finders and we talk about the victims but actually you always need someone willing to make an accusation and so trying however hard it is however unpleasant it is and however

Disturbing it is get at what the accusers thought and said can also be very valuable and finally what do you think it was like what you think it might have been like to be in Mary’s position the only words we have from her recorded are I am innocent of the

Charges that’s the only testimony we have with Mary what do we do then do we decide not to say anything about her do we say let’s look at the accusers let’s look at the witch finders and Let’s ignore Mary the only way you can get around that lack of

Testimony that lack of evidence about Mary is to try and be imaginative so I think it’s actually quite a useful thing as long as it’s grounded in this uh in this knowledge uh that’s one of the accusations from Elizabeth otley taken on oath before the justices

Uh she was meant to have um given the daughter of Elizabeth otley an apple which caused the child to sicken and die and she was also meant to sent her rat likee imp to uh um the the house of the op and that caused the child to have

Fits and die so behind this accusation is the death of a child then again that’s something you know we need perhaps to think about and take into account justify the accusation or the treatment of Mary but it could perhaps help us at least get some way towards understanding it uh and that’s another

Allegation made against Mary Johnson by a woman called Annabelle Durrant um basically they met Annabelle Durrant was from fingering ho she met Mary uh walking along the path along the river uh and Annabelle had her child uh she was holding her child’s hand and Mary Johnson said to the child it was a

Pretty child and she stroked its face and gave it a piece of bread and butter poor Mary she’s trying to be kind she’s trying to be complimentary she’s trying to interact positively with her neighbors but lo and behold what happens the informant’s child Annabelle’s child eats the bread and shrieks and sickens and

Dies um and the child continued for the space of eight days shrieking and tearing itself and then Di so again the emotion the tension the death of children again this really brings these big processes and explanations down right to the level of the the very specific just to finish then I have no

Idea if this would work so just shoot me down in flames if it’s loadable Boney but um uh these are some assessment ideas I’ll finish with um get students to write a short essay or piece of writing or whatever it’s called in response to a question that you’ve

Already talked about motivation of the witch finders how responsible were they for the witch trials I think that would give them confidence that they’ve already covered some of that in discussions uh but also give them a bit of room for their own ideas um or you

Know why do the witch trials or how the witch trials spread so something that that’s been covered at some level but but that they could then write about perhaps in in a bit more length or you might relate some piece of writing to a source extract so you know

What does the statute or what does the pamp extract uh or the title page or even the image you know the sources don’t have to be texts early modern people read images they are largely non textually literate so the pictures really really really matter uh so you

Can ask them what does this Source what what does it tell us uh about beliefs what’s it about uh and again you probably get very different answers you know relative to the level of of of ability uh what are its strengths and weaknesses if you think that they’re kind of able to do

That sort of evaluation um I really really love the Shakespeare task because that’s exactly the sort of thing that I think works really well um do something more creative get students excited you want them God forbid to choose to do this gcsd who knows they

Might even want to come and do it at a level or university even if they don’t I find it so depressing when I meet people who say oh I love history but I hated it at school how sad is that why why should they not love history at school so get

Them to do something more creative um I’ve done this with primary school kids and it absolutely blew my mind years five and years six we’re writing letters from the point of view of someone held in culture to Castle they did a play they they wrote a play about a witch

Trial they did pieces of art that what is a witch we asked they all went off and did bits of art so I think when you’ve got room to bring in um creative things like that I also think you are enabling students who struggle with reading who struggle with writing uh to

Show their knowledge in another way I don’t think we should always expect that students can only show that they know stuff by writing um and and finally could you use art or even design you know if you’re good on Tech I’m rubbish on Tech so if a student’s very good with

With these various sort of drawing and tech programs could you design a memorial to commemorate the victims of the witch trials where do you think it should be put and why so they still need to write something in relation to that now I know uh from teaching at Union

We’ve got a lot more freedom to design the curriculum we absolutely subscribe to the idea I think Mike mentioned earlier or perhaps if somebody else Jonathan perhaps variation of diet students need that students want that we need to enable them to show their knowledge their understanding in

Different formats so we try and do that at University and the big debate we always have about that is oh you need grade criteria for every single different piece of assessment and then everyone decides oh let’s just stick to written work because we’ve got great criteria for those but I think if you’re

Going to go for lots of of flexible assessments or varied assessments um keeping the grade criteria fairly uh broad is probably the best way to go again I don’t know if this would work for you at key stage three but uh you know grade criteria demonstrating and understanding of

Materials that that you’ve looked at demonstrating an empathy with the historical subjects that you’re studying uh and demonstrating an ability to fulfill the brief of the question and then you give them some choice and your also um give students a very different abilities a range of things to to work

On and work with and you know you can be you can be really really um Amazed by by what they what they decide to do and the ownership they take of it as well is very very striking whether it would work I don’t know but anyway I’ll just offer you

Those those ideas thank you very much for listening thank you so much sorry right this is the kind of the final push now so we’ve got the W but before we do that andone want to go home and do other excise things and not have to say afternoon evening so I just

Wanted to say thank you so much to our wonderful teaching speakers so Emily who kicked us off this morning thank you so much Owen you did an absolutely brilliant job Amanda and Jacob you all together you like to do it together they were really thought provoking and you

Gave up your time and me hassling you over an email saying please can I have this please can have that so thank you so much for that so round of applause fore also in our second te me Cameron who’s probably not going to talk to me

For at least two weeks Cameron Sara and Matt who did some um brilliant things that I really wanted to think about and we’ve already started having conversations about particular trient because that’s something we we definitely want to try and try and do and have that so round of applause for

This and then our wonderful keynot so mighte you really made me think today about what we could do what we can do and what’s possible Jonathan you had a tough with assess but I find that really interesting so I’ve really had an opportunity to think about that so I’ll

Go home and have a really good thing and then finally to Alison because I’m obviously very excited that she’s here she’s also didn’t mention that she unfortunately had to do with both my undergraduate and my postgraduate um dissertations which weren’t on witchcraft they were on women and men’s

Football actually so you know you can do lots of different things at University so thank you so much for giving up time I really do appreciate it final thanks is to the wonderful history team who have um given up their time to go to today which is CLA em and ‘s hiding at

The back and then Rogers is at the back hiding the sea so thank you very much so we’re going to do the raffle now so while you ready everybody do you have your raffle ticket can you pull the’s it number are we ready they’re at the front we’ve got

Stationary wonderful gifts given to us by Hoda op and Collins and there chocolate and Bo basically okay 2 three 1 two three oh oh I’m so sorry you okay so the L selling the raffle tickets is the first person to get a I’m really sorry Emily good okay next one is 2 one0

210 210 fabulous please come up Sir take something exciting are we going again everything has to go5 oh hello she something exciting I mean I think Tina chose the book everybody wanted just say yeah noted 166 166 oh there we go fabulous there’s still books there’s still other

Bits are please 221 221 if that’s you T you’re not to 221 fabulous right 39 if you did that this morning number 30 oh God I’m so sorry stop winning I mean all the money goes towards do outside UK so that’s what we’re going to donate towards 259 anyone 259 259 259

Oh yes is that mine or yourss oh oh no choose don’t choose the books I donated they all mine I don’t chose any of those that that’s a book from my office bril okay it’s a very good book I Haven read it 99 99 sorry I’m getting distracted 99 no please go away

No 99 how many more got 17 number 17 yes you won something you allowed to win yeah definitely this is test 17 sorry 17 17 okay oh we’re do CH it back in 139 oh yeah got person fabulous 82 82 82 another one one yay choose something oh got we

Got some mugg as well we got three mugs now sorry up G obviously know 105 105 105 I’m going to break this 105 105 Mr L did you buy any you’re a cheek SK okay I can’t guarantee how many more how many More go go go got4 174 did you oh oh I see you want up now I see come on 93 93 93 what did you not want to come up okay go 97 97 is that you as well oh nice har get a mug why not 58 58 58

58 we have two prizes left one more one more final one final one is oh did you go for the room I not that yeah okay 255 255 oh not you again is it actually oh yeah okay I’m lucky but that’s it just want to say absolutely massive thank you to

Everybody that’s made their way to the wonderful town that is CH and we’re not just going witchcraft so yeah um and hopefully we’ll see you all again soon in probably Manchester next time um and we’ll hopefully as this has well we have take care safe travel time thank you so much for [Applause]

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