Five key strategies for going beyond the textbook for OCR GCSE History B (SHP)

When we ask teachers what they and their students are enjoying about new OCR B (SHP) GCSE they nearly always mention three things:

• The varied and interesting historical content
• The clear structure of the course and of individual studies
• The human interest that lies at the heart of each study.

SHP’s new GCSE textbook series (published by Hodder Education) contributes to these, but the success of the course is also down to effective teaching. Five strategies are proving particularly helpful:

Planning historical enquiries

Many teachers are following the enquiries used in the textbooks, but are adapting and modifying these to meet the needs of their own students. Two good examples of approaches to planning enquiries for The People’s Health can be found on the SHP website

Ensuring accessibility

You’ll obviously need to adapt some parts of the textbooks to meet the needs of weaker students. The following strategies are particularly helpful.

• Making greater use of pictures and documentary clips
• Simplifying some of the author text and activities
• Re-formatting text by creating matching and sequencing activities
• Creating opportunities for collaborative work
• Turning textbook narratives and situations into teacher-directed role-plays

You can find a helpful example on the SHP website

Choosing your own case studies of individual people and places

One of the strengths of the OCR B (SHP) specification is the opportunity it provides to include specific case studies that ‘bring the history alive’ for students. For example, in Alex Ford’s textbook The Making of America there are several case studies including the intriguing life story of Quanah Parker. On Alex’s website you’ll find more great case studies. The Thematic Study and British Depth Study offer a range of opportunities to include your own case-studies of local people and places.

Engaging students with real historical sources

The new GCSE books contain some fascinating sources. You can enable students to delve deeper into historical sources by building some of the fantastic online source collections into your schemes of work. See, for example, the extensive source collection for Crime and Punishment on the National Archive website or, for Living Under Nazi Rule, the excellent new website on Nazi concentration camps. http://www.camps.bbk.ac.uk 

Making the most of visual interpretations

SHP’s textbook series includes some interesting visual interpretations. A google image search using the names of some of the artists and and illustrators we’ve used in the textbooks will produce some great pictures. You’ll also find a wealth of wonderful historical illustrations in the Look and Learn History Picture Library

During this academic year, SHP will be adding resources for teaching the OCR B (SHP) specification to our website. The SHP e-news will alert you to these, so make sure you’ve signed up to our mailing list

Comment below and tell us what methods you have adopted to take your student's learning beyond the text book, you can email the OCR History team: history@ocr.org.uk if you prefer and follow them on Twitter @OCR_history and if your teaching or considering teaching OCR History sign up for email updates direct to your inbox too.

About the author

Michael Riley - Director at Schools History Project (SHP)

Michael has been Director at SHP since 2008. He is responsible for the strategic direction of SHP, ensuring that the project provides an independent source of ideas and experience for the teaching of history in schools. He also organises the annual conference and regional courses, maintains the website and represents SHP at external meetings. Michael is involved in the development of SHP-Hodder publications.