Mr. Jerrit's History teaching blog

 I have been thinking about this for a while - inspired by Christine Counsel's ideas of curriculum development I explore elsewhere, as well as by a recent webinar I attended on "How to do LGBTQ History" which I thought was fascinating. I am currently reading this excellent book which addresses some of the current thinking in the historiography and in particular the key problem of terminology. In an era where the boundaries are being explored and where identity (both outward and inward) is important, the use of terms like "gay", "bisexual" and even "queer" become problematic. Individuals in the past may not recognise the terms historians and others use when discussing LGBTQ issues in the past. I first came across "queer" as a child in the 1980s when it was being used as a term of abuse, but it has reclaimed as a broad label for identities, or as this article by the National Archives  says it is " a label that encompasses the flu...

I am currently marking 3 sets' worth of tests for Year 9, which my school did this week for all subjects and all year groups 7-12. While I have a big concern about the efficacy of this as a process (Year 7 English is just not the same as Year 12 A Level Chemistry and should not be treated in the same way, for example) it got me thinking further about the way I have been approaching source analysis across the curriculum and the year groups I teach. I set this as a source analysis question at the end of a unit on the Western Front, with a focus on Verdun, the Somme and tank development. We had spent time analysing sources in different ways (what they can tell us about the past, the views they have, comparison, usefulness, reliability etc) Although I appreciate the wording could be different,  I chose this source because I felt there was a lot of potential in it and details which students could unpack. There were some good answers from good students, but only a few managed to get the ...