Coordinating History Across the Primary School

Julie Davies, Jason Redmond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135712891
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Specifically designed for busy teachers who have responsibility for co- ordinating a subject area within their primary school. Each volume in the series conforms to a concise style, while providing a wealth of tips, case studies and photocopiable material that teachers can use immediately.; There are special volumes dedicated to dealing with OFSTED, creating whole school policy and the demands of co-ordinating several subjects within a small school.; The entire set of 16 volumes is available.

Part one
The role of the history coordinator

Chapter 1 History and you: getting started

Chapter 2 Developing skills to become an effective history coordinator

Chapter 1
History and you: getting started

On learning that you are to become the subject manager for history, you may feel a sense of pleasurable anticipation at this opportunity. If this is followed by a concern about the weight of the task ahead, and a temporary questioning of your own ability and suitability for leadership, this is a perfectly normal response. What is important is that you understand that everyone has these doubts. The crucial question to ask is— How can I do the best job possible, for the children, the school and my colleagues? This opening chapter is intended to give you support in a practical way, so that you have a temporary survival kit to help you in the early stages as a subject manager.

Know yourself

One of the first things that you must do as a subject manager is to look honestly at yourself in the light of what you believe the job entails and how close you are to matching its requirements. This is an important first step in coming to terms with what you perceive as any discrepancy in what you believe the job entails and your ability to fulfil its requirements.

Think about

• Do you really know enough about the subject!
• Are you aware of how the subject is taught within your school!
• Do you know of any existing subject-related documentation!

It may be that the area of history is well developed within your school and your job will entail fine tuning and monitoring the subject, or it may be that your school is in the process of developing a new policy and scheme of work in the light of the new National Curriculum Orders. At the precise moment that your headteacher asks you if you will take over history, all these thoughts are irrelevant. The only things that matter are:

• your level of interest and enthusiasm for history as a subject,
• your view of yourself as an historian,
• your knowledge of history, both as a subject and in the context of children’s development in learning the skills necessary to be historians, and the ‘facts’ necessary to be historically aware.

This is where you need to be honest with yourself and do a personal audit of what history you know. There is no point imagining that you will be an effective subject manager without an ounce of knowledge about the subject, but neither will anyone expect you to know or learn everything. There would never be enough time to do this and it would be pointless anyway. You cannot teach all the history in the school, so why know it all? What you must have, though, is a basic grounding of knowledge, and enough know-how in the area to be able to offer advice to colleagues, and point them in the right direction. Your job is to facilitate the effective learning of history in your school, by advising and monitoring your colleagues. It is not your job to take the world on your shoulders, metaphorically, and know everything.

This section will concentrate on areas that you personally need to examine, in order to meet your needs as an effective subject manager, and the needs of the school as a result. In the following sections, our aim is to examine both the self development needed by a newly qualified teacher (NQT) taking on their first area of responsibility, and the needs of an experienced teacher, given the role of history subject manager for the first time. The experiences of each make it necessary to look at their needs separately. Some strategies are needed and used by all subject managers, of course, and these will be examined in the following sections.

How much work is going on in history?

As a classroom teacher, based in either Key Stage 1 or 2, it is very possible you have not been into other teachers’ rooms or even walked all around the school. Now is the time to do this. Fact-finding, collecting empirically based evidence and making notes are all facets of a historian’s skill, these are what you will need to get a first impression of exactly what history is in evidence around the school. A key fact to remember is that all schools teach history. They have to, it is a statutory requirement, and, somewhere in your school, no matter how unlikely it may appear at first, there is history being taught well. Wherever it is happening, it is something that you need to seize on and celebrate. This will show those who are insecure in the subject that it can be done well—within a busy classroom environment with a thousand other things to do. As subject manager, it must be your aim to extend the success, and build on the good practice that already exists. Do not hesitate to praise the teachers in your school who are doing their best despite the obstacles that are in their way. Everyone responds to a little bit of praise and it may have the additional effect of making them somewhat more responsive to other suggestions you may have.

A walk around the school will help you to start to gain a feel for the position of history in the school. Take a notebook with you and jot down the things that you find.

You can start in the corridors and hall. Look at displays around the school—what do they tell you about the status of history? Displays in public areas tend to be developed on a rota system (for example—‘Your turn to do the entrance hall’). They will indicate classroom foci at particular times of the year and, therefore, there should be some history publicly displayed somewhere. If not, you should ask why not.

Look in classrooms—is there any evidence of history on the walls or on display in three dimensional work? History may be taught either as a regular weekly lesson or as a block in the timetable; either way, you would expect at least one classroom to have some evidence on display. If not, why not.

Is there any staffroom chat about the subject? General staff pre-occupations usually become items for staff meetings, so noting anything on the subject of history is an important beginning for putting history on the agenda.

Where does history feature in curriculum planning forecasts? The school development plan will reveal what is to be taught and you can use this information as a marker for offering help to particular teachers at times of their greatest interest in history. By considering such questions you may begin to develop a feel for the task ahead.

Other considerations to be acted upon include:

• Talk to the headteacher to determine his or her attitude.
• Examine school documentation of all kinds. If there has been a recent OFSTED inspection, what were the implications for history? This report could be your ally in your commitment to enhancing the quality of history teaching and learning in your school. If the report is somewhat negative, the action plan developed to improve matters will be the result of staff meetings and will be a focus for the way forward,
• Make sure you have read the latest advice from the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) as well as the most recent subject guidelines for OFSTED inspectors as set out in the handbook.

In order to broaden your own experience of history and to begin to join a network of people outside school, make contact with a local adviser, or school, college or university where advice may be available. If you are an NQT it may be worth returning to a school where you have completed a teaching practice and talking to the history manager. You will almost always be given advice willingly by someone you have worked with as a student teacher. In addition, take note of any courses which might help you or your colleagues. Enquire about any national association for teachers of your subject. Do they have a primary section? Do they have local meetings?

You will have to strengthen the links with the local community in order to fulfil the National Curriculum requirements.

• How has the local study unit been planned?
• Does the local community fit in?

One of the teachers will have to plan the compulsory local study unit. What help can the local residents be here? You need to access oral history as part of the children’s history entitlement at both Key Stages among the families, the shopkeepers, local tradespeople of all sorts, as well as among the professions which service the community. Have your colleagues looked at the local community with this in mind? They may be unaware of the wealth of material for this aspect of history that exists on their doorstep.

Keep a record

As a historian, you know how important written evidence is and, therefore, as a subject manager, you will find keeping a portfolio of your activity helpful. It will help you to show development and progress over time in your role and to demonstrate your success. The file should contain your notes, relevant documents and your diary and you will be able to use it when you talk to the headteacher as it will help establish a professional dialogue. Through reference to your notes, talk about the current priority history has, in your view, within the school development plan. Emphasise your interest in and commitment to the place of history in children’s work. Discuss your priorities and formulate a rationale and targets for your work— especially with regard to any formal documentation, such as the need to develop or revise the school history policy. After this initial meeting, start to think in terms of a plan of action at the classroom level.

Arrange to visit other teachers’ classrooms

You will need to consider the reasons you give teachers for your presence—whether you are an NQT or have had twenty years’ teaching experience.

Think about the best way to get into teachers’ rooms without making them feel uncomfortable or insecure in their teaching ability. Often the teacher in the next classroom to you will be used to you popping in and out to share resources so that may be the best place to start. If you do manage to get into a classroom, what will you do with the information that you gather? Is this information for the headteacher, deputy, the governors, senior management team or for the class teacher only? Is this decision yours to make? Remember, traditionally primary teachers do not observe the lessons of their colleagues and do not offer comment on colleagues’ teaching styles,

Think about

Are you there:

• as a critical friend to focus on an area the teacher has identified!
• to discover the quality of the work in history in that classroom!
• to give you an idea of progression in children’s skills across the school!

approach and lesson plans, or act as critical friends. For this reason, subject managers have often proved reluctant to direct colleagues or suggest ideas. Recently, with peer review of teaching developing, teachers have had to come to terms with the idea of being watched and their performance evaluated and discussed with them.

In order for the role of subject manager to evolve from simply writing policies and offering tips, there needs to be a genuine whole school commitment to improving standards of teaching performance. This may then result in a more open door approach on the part of teachers towards subject coordinators. While you are working towards this state of affairs, you may be able to create a climate of change by inviting colleagues into your room to see some aspect of history that you feel needs to be improved upon, or incorporated within colleagues’ history teaching. Other ways of beginning the process of change might include:

• inviting a speaker into school;
• displaying articles or reviews;
• running a workshop;
• asking a colleague to trial a new approach or recently published material;
• reporting back to colleagues on a course you have attended.

If you are managing history for the first time in your school, the first thing that you need to do is see history taught in your school by other members of staff. It is important that you gain experience from your colleagues, but as a subject manager, it will also be invaluable for you to see how different teachers approach the subject. In one school recently, we witnessed approaches as varied as a ‘hands-on’ session involving artefacts borrowed from a local authority to a concentrated comprehension session using text books. No doubt, you will find similar lessons in your school.

An important feature of the history teaching in your school is to consider to what extent does it change throughout the school? For example, when watching Key Stage 1 history, you can be made aware of how easy it is for those teachers to fall into the trap of relying too heavily on one aspect of history, the story telling, without really breaking into the use of source material. In Key Stage 2, you may see that the reverse is true —too little story and too many sources.

How children’s recording of their history learning develops throughout their six years is a feature you must keep up-to-date on. The easiest and, probably most informative, way to do this, is to look at children’s exercise books. With this aim in mind, it is worth borrowing books from various classes to examine the various teaching approaches to written history. Teachers with responsibility for history, working in a school which has more than one form entry should also keep close watch on the books of classes in the same year. Generally, you need to become aware of the history that goes on around you, and the different approaches that different teachers have. A little personal knowledge of how your colleagues teach the subject will certainly be useful when drawing up a realistic, workable policy document, and absolutely crucial when designing a scheme of work.

A more experienced member of staff would perhaps not need to carry out this area of self development to the extent that an NQT should. As an experienced member of staff, you will have taught history before, perhaps through different year groups, and key stages, and you should have a fair knowledge of the different approaches to history that go on in your school, simply through the everyday conversations in the staffroom. However, it may be worth your while to see a whole history lesson in a year group in which you have no experience, and it would certainly be worthwhile to borrow a few of the children’s books from different year groups to see exactly what your colleagues are covering.

Sources of information about history in your school

Areas to examine when auditing history:

• your own knowledge of history, and of the National Curriculum for history;
• curriculum planning documents—long, medium or short term planning;
• displays in public areas, e.g. halls, corridors;
• classroom displays;
• children’s books;
• any recent documents/reports regarding history in your school;
• your colleagues.

Initial notes on these items could be used to begin to develop your subject manager’s portfolio.

Request a budget to support your work

This allocation will enable you to buy and use resources without continual recourse to your headteacher. Your argument for this money will be strengthened if the school developmen...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• The subject leader’S Handbooks
• Series editor’s preface
• Introduction
• Part one: The role of the history coordinator
• Part two: What history coordinators need to know
• Part three: Whole school policies and Schemes of work
• Part four: Monitoring for Quality
• Part five: Resources for learning
• References