Here they are, on their favourite barge The Apollo, on the River Thames, in all their glory. This is the Sharp family. Start with the man in green holding a sheet of music for his sister. You will almost definitely know him. This is Granville Sharp. I’ve become exceedingly fond of Granville. ‘Eccentric and socially…

It was during a rainy Bristol Tuesday breaktime that I realised why I was so flippant about including environmental history in my curriculum. ‘The climate, you see’, I said to my colleague Tamsin as I double-boiled the staffroom kettle, ‘can’t challenge you when you don’t include it.’ Kate Hawkey’s book History and the Climate Crisis…

I’ve been hugely reinspired by the work of Christine Counsell in her fantastic book, History and Literacy in Year 7, as I prepare to create a series of webinars about History and Literacy for the HA. Counsell suggests that, during causal analysis, pupils should consider the boundaries of terms such as ‘long term’ and ‘short term’…

I have been teaching for 14 years. I know lots of things: photocopier codes, teachers’ nicknames, who will lend me a board pen at short notice. But every new academic year is still full of monsters: previous failures, planned upheavals, unknown whole-school assessment strategies. So, along with pinning my new timetable to the board above…

In this session, in February 2021, I shared my research on decolonising curricula with teaching staff from across infant, junior and senior schools. I began by explaining some of my motivations to take on a one-year role leading efforts to diversify curricula, which includes raising a mixed-race family. Teachers were encouraged to ‘draw along’ to…

I discovered that a ceramic pot had been broken yesterday. The pot was less than 5 months old. A year ago, I would have been very annoyed with this broken pot. The broken pot would have been taken to the tip. This year, I didn’t see a broken pot. I saw an opportunity for something…

A lot of people have been asking about my approach to my Mali scheme of work so I thought that I would share some of what I have put together. In this blog post, I wrote about how some of my research led me to create a causation enquiry, ‘Where did Medieval Mali keep its…

Here is an enquiry that focuses upon the experience of African, Asian and First Nation soldiers and labourers at the Western Front. The enquiry is centered around the second-order concept of significance. It will be written up in the journal Teaching History in 2021. I was also planning on presenting these resources at the Historical Association Conference…

This is a one-off blog post in which I show how a book inspired me to improve my teaching practice. The post ends, as they all do, with a practical resource. Today I show how my reading of Olusoga’s book The World’s War, and the philosophy of Alain de Botton, helped me to diversify our…

This is the last in a series of four blog posts in which I show how a journal article or book has inspired me to improve my teaching practice. Each post ends with a practical resource or activity. Today I show how my reading of Doerr’s bestselling novel All The Light We Cannot See, and my reflection on the…

This is the second in a new series of four blog posts in which I show how a journal article or book has inspired me to improve my teaching practice. Each post ends with a practical resource or activity. Today I show how my reading of Frankopan’s bestselling book Silk Roads, my reflection of the seminal work of Bailey-Watson…

This is the first in a new series of four weekly blog posts in which I show how a journal article or book has inspired me to improve my teaching practice. Each post includes a practical resource or activity. Today I show how my reading of Marshall’s award-winning book Heretics and Believers, and my reflection of the work of Counsell…