Planning Issues

OBJECTIVES / OUTCOMES BANK

The following groups provide a summary of most of the likely outcomes you will cover in the teaching of history to Years 7 to 11. The detail and composition of the groups combines recent developments in the National Curriculum with its Key Elements and the assessment objectives of the revised GCSE. In addition, the summary utilises the first detailed analysis of objectives for the study of history produced by Jeanette Coltham and John Fines in their pamphlet for the Historical Association, first published in 1971. All groups could be prefaced by the words ‘to enable the pupil(s) to’ or ‘At the end of the lesson the pupil(s) should be able to’. Usually the examples are presented in generic form and they would need to be amended to include the specific historical content that is being studied. On some occasions a specific example is given, which again will change according to the context in which it is used.

Group A: Recall

1. Produce orally with confidence and accuracy names and terminology specific to the topic being studied.
2. Recall the sequence of events, which led to a specific incident in the past.
3. Recall some of the reasons why a particular event took place by completing a spider diagram without reference to books.
4. Recall the procedures for preparing to write a piece of extended writing.

Group B: Chronology

1. Demonstrate understanding of the terms ‘generation’, ‘century’, ‘decade’, ‘millennium’.
2. Demonstrate understanding of the terms ‘A.D.’ and ‘B.C.’.
3. Able to place in the correct sequence: pre-history, ancient, medieval, modern.
4. Able to place a date in the correct century.
5. Able to construct a simple/ complex time-chart.
6. Able to place in the correct sequence: Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Norman, Tudor, Stuart, Georgian, Victorian.
7. Demonstrate understanding of some major historical ‘period’ terms such as Renaissance, Reformation, The Industrial Revolution.

Group C: Key Concepts

1. Change/ continuity.

1. Create a time-chart showing an overview of the main phases of the French Revolution.
2. Create a diagram showing how more people have been given the vote over the last 170 years.
3. Draw two pictures of church interiors, which show the changes resulting from the Reformation.
4. Compose a letter, written by a handloom-weaver, describing the effects on his work and family of the building of factory alongside a nearby river.
5. Explain why some things changed and other things stayed the same by a study of the impact of the enclosures on a village community.
6. Show understanding that change does not necessarily mean progress by an examination of the introduction of tractors to replace shire-horses for ploughing. (The top soil became thin and blew away in the Fens and so there is a return to the use of shire-horses.)
7. Demonstrate an understanding that changes can occur in one part of the country but things remain the same in another.
8. Explain how some changes are more important than others when study the Factory legislation of the earlier nineteenth century.
9. Explain how some people’s judgement of what was progress at the time can change with the passing of time by examining the Local Government Act of 1974.
10. Can identify the point of origin of a change affecting the human condition, e.g. the discovery and use of steam power.
11. Can explain organised trends, e.g. the growth of women’s rights, Roman imperialism, the spread of Lutheranism.
12. Identify the turning-point in the coverage of an event or topic.

1. Cause/ consequence

1. Distinguish between a cause and a fact.
2. Understand that most events have several, sometimes many, causes.
3. Identify and justify the choice of the most important cause.
4. Understand and explain the short term causes / long term causes of an event.
5. Can categorise causes e.g. into social, economic, political, religious, technical causes
6. Can group causes e.g. by geographical region, Balkans, colonial possessions, naval supremacy.
7. Can demonstrate how different causes are linked.
8. Explain how an individual contributed to an event.
9. Show the short / long term effects of an individual’s role.
10. Assess the importance of an individual compared to other economic, political and religious factors.

1. Significance

1. Create a diagram or flow-chart to show the connections between events and their significance.
2. Can select and explain the choice of cards which include ‘likely’ explanations of the significance of an event.

• Select from a list of those events, which are considered to be the most significant and can explain the choice.

• Explain why people or groups of people might differ in their assessment of which events in the past were significant.

• Create, in groups, a time-chart, limited to specified number of significant events, from a historical narrative of a topic, which is to be explained to the rest of the class and later displayed.

• Write a short paragraph of no more than 100 words summarising the events or developments, which they believe to be the most significant.

• Explain the significance of an event by considering an alternative, hypothetical outcome.

• Compare two historical events and explain which of the two they thought was the more significant.

Group D: Sources

1. Be able to make a list showing the range of historical evidence available to the historian.
2. Understand the contents and meaning of a (documentary, pictorial, statistical, contemporary, secondary, etc.) source.
3. Extract information from a source, which is relevant to the enquiry, and use the information to complete a chart.
4. Understand the meaning of a source and express this in their own words.
5. Compare two historical sources and explain what is learned from the comparison.
6. Analyse a source and decide whether the contents are consistent with there own knowledge of the topic.
7. Analyse a source for a particular line of enquiry, e.g. its bias or point of view.
8. Analyse a source in a way that separates fact from value judgement.
9. Interpret the meaning of a source.
10. Assess the sufficiency of a source, or group of sources, for the study of a topic.
11. Explain the gaps in the evidence presented by applying their own knowledge of the topic.
12. Evaluate the accuracy and possibly the authenticity of a source by applying their own knowledge of the topic.
13. Evaluate the reliability of a source.
14. Use their initiative to acquire source material on a prescribed topic.
15. Use a combination of sources to produce a reconstruction of an event, an overview, a summative diagram or a time chart.

Group E: Interpretations.

1. Understand the range of interpretations and representations of an event, which are available for the historian, through drama, paintings, film, books, sites etc.
2. Can indicate how and why different interpretations agree or disagree.
3. Explain why different interpretations have come about.
4. Evaluate the reliability of an interpretation.
5. Can use knowledge of a topic to help evaluate the validity of an interpretation.
6. Can relate an interpretation to the context / provenance in which it was created.
7. Can discuss different historians’ interpretations of an event or individual in the past.

Group F: Past Attitudes, Values, Empathy.

1. Describe an historical incident with signs of personal involvement.
2. Constructs a story or short play about a period in which characters are portrayed in the round, based on the historical evidence provided, without anachronisms.
3. Researches and prepares a briefing card indicating the attitude or viewpoint of a person in the past to an event, proposal, e.g. for a new road, canal, railway, enclosure, join a rebellion, not necessarily one for whom they have sympathy.
4. Peoples an historic building with characters who are true in action and thought to a particular period.
5. Describe the motives a person or group of people in the past as part of an explanation of an event.

Group G: Organisation and Communication.

1. Communicate observation or experience to others orally, e.g. explanation of the contents and meaning of a source.
2. Draws a reconstruction of an event.
3. Select and collect materials (notes, newspaper cuttings, pictures, audio-tapes, material from CD-Roms, etc.) as a basis for a historical enquiry.
4. Categorise information as a preparation for a piece of extended writing.
5. Write a well-structured, analytical and accurate explanation of the causes of the English Civil War.
6. Create a diagram, which summarises the religious changes in the sixteenth century.
7. Use the contents, index and glossary of a book.
8. Display Computer reference skills to find an article on The Norman Conquest.
9. Make notes, using own words, having been supplied with headings.
10. Delivers or writes a speech or a line of questioning in the role of a person in the past.
11. Contribute towards a wall display showing the consequences of the Black Death.
12. Explain and use with confidence the following words: domestic industry, factory system, ‘laissez-faire’ and Luddism.

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