In the Classroom

Today the first-year A-level class concluded the reign of Henry VII in the AQA The Tudors module. Moving on to a new reign and monarch is in many ways a positive thing: new content and new debates to engage in. However, in other ways we say farewell to someone who has become an old friend. […]

A few months ago I posted a short play that I had written half-in-jest for a History class (The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln). It is a past-time that I seem to have been more and more engaged with over the past three or so years, and the origins of this stretch back to my first […]

No, this post will not be a stab at engaging in Francis Fukuyama’s argument of ‘the end of history’, but rather something much more important: the end of the A-level History cohort for 2018. Yesterday the class completed their third and final exam and have now reached the end of their two year A-level course. […]

As I write this the second year A-level cohort are currently taking the OCR History exam ‘Lancastrians, Yorkists and Henry VII’. It is the second exam out of a series of three, sandwiched in-between ‘Popular Culture & the Witchcraze’ and ‘Germany 1919-1963’. It is a heavy burden: three different periods of history over the space […]

The days until the OCR ‘Popular Culture & the Witchcraze’ exam continue to count down (gulp!). Whilst at a half-term revision session earlier in the week a new question was thrown into the ring and was discussed by the group. There were some interesting suggestions, particularly regarding how to approach it in terms of a […]

This week I ventured back into the college for a few hours worth of revision with an enthusiastic and vocal A-level History class. It was announced that there was just one week to go before the OCR Popular Culture & Witchcraze exam: a two-and-a-half-hour long exam that makes up 40% of their overall A-level grade. […]

I’ve recently been focussing on finishing the first year scheme of work for the AQA module on The Tudors. Year one is spent focussing on the first two generations of the Tudors – Grandpappa Tudor (Henry VII) and Daddy Tudor (Henry VIII) – before pausing in the summer to begin coursework. The second year will […]

With only a handful of weeks remaining until the big A-level History exam – Popular Culture and the Witchcraze – the chief focus has been spent on revision on the interpretation questions (based on two extracts) and thematic questions (your typical essay questions, but with a twist that needs the response organised over three themes […]

So, today was the premiere of the new play by Dave Shakespeare: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was received warm to middling reviews and responses from the unfortunate souls that were willing to indulge my artistic endeavour. In the same of 4 sheets of A4 it recounts not only Lincoln’s death, but also the […]

This week I made an agreement with my first year A-level History class: I would not subject them to another PowerPoint based lesson for two weeks. This promise was made after having struggled through two sessions of Henry VIII’s foreign policy. Over Easter I constructed a mammoth 60 slide beast, and was excited about covering […]

So, another Easter is upon us and it provides a chance of two weeks to switch gears, re-orient the brain, and to pick up on other pursuits (such as writing that screenplay about Father Christmas, delving into family history, and even blogging). But the Easter break can also rear the head of that other event: […]