TS-9.3

Given the importance of the bigger picture when studying history, where are the lessons that give students a large scale historical overview? Take a broader view picture, particularly if you want students to focus on the concept of historical change. It’s all well and good to search for that killer enquiry question, but if you never show your students the long view or overview, your course will lack perspective and meaning, and students will consequently struggle to develop a framework of the past. Why use overviews? I’ve been a fan of using big picture overviews for some time. ‘Scale switching’, as the American history education professor Bob Bain calls it, allows students to see the whole of what you’re teaching over a course. It provides perspective. Curriculum theorist Mary Myatt argues 50 of them kindly completed a questionnaire for me, in which most agreed that it was important to get a good balance of overview and depth at KS3. Many also concurred that a key curriculum aim was to help students develop a ‘big picture’ view of the past. Yet in practice, how often do you do this? I know that I’ve seldom seen big picture overview lessons being taught. I also know that when analysing different departmental schemes of work as part of the same project, I’ve struggled to identify any big picture overview lessons that cover a certain time period, depth study or thematic study. DemDeutschen Volke So why not take in the view? Help your students see that big picture of the past. Show your classes the whole picture of what you’re teaching, both before and after you dive into the depth. Doing so will give them a better sense of perspective and help to cement their learning. So how do we do this? There are many possible that when students begin a new unit, they need to be able to see where it fits into the wider whole. That way, they can learn the particular by locating it in the general. Sound advice! Others before her have previously criticised school history courses built around different teaching topics for providing pupils with a ‘bits and pieces’ knowledge of the past that ultimately adds up to very little (see Shemilt, R. and Lee, P. 2009 – bit.ly/ shemilt-lee). But if we’re honest with ourselves, how often do you present your students with a big picture overview like this? Maybe once, at the beginning of the course? This year I’ve been working with a group of teachers, helping them think more deeply about their history curriculum. Over 20 teachwire.net/secondary F or around 20 years now, history teachers in England seem to have agreed that planning and delivering historical knowledge is best achieved through using an enquiry question. And they’re right. In a seminal article published by Teaching History in 2000, teacher trainer Michael Riley outlined how enquiry questions should be engaging, focus on an aspect of historical thinking and finish with a meaningful outcome activity that pulls together all the learning that has happened. This is entirely sound advice. It’s an approach that works, full stop. However, one potential drawback of planning your course around a selection of enquiry questions is the way in which this can cause you to jump from topic to topic without presenting a whole view of the course. In history, it’s pretty damned important to see the big “Whenstudentsbegina newunit, theyneed tobeable toseewhere itfits into the widerwhole” teachwire.net/ awover DOWNLOAD a set of key events, images and a presentation for Elena Stevens’ American West overview lesson at