Planning for the History Around Us study - Michael Riley
27 March 2017
OCR B centres are choosing a range of wonderful sites for the History Around Us study:
- Prehistoric stone circles
- Medieval castles
- Country houses
- Early factories
- Nineteenth-century communities
- Second world war sites.
Many of you will now be putting together the scheme of work for your GCSE site study so it may be helpful to share some planning principles and point you to some helpful resources on the OCR and SHP websites.
Planning an enquiry for your site study
Building your students’ knowledge and understanding of the site through an overarching enquiry question will provide a clear focus for their learning and will create a purposeful and engaging sequence of lessons for the site study. You’ll need to think carefully about how the enquiry question relates to overall history of your chosen site, and how it will prepare students for the History Around Us exam.
Consider these two examples based on the Tower of London:
- What made the Tower of London so terrifying?
This enquiry question has the potential to grab student’ attention and would provide an intriguing focus for their learning. An investigation into the ways in which medieval and Tudor monarchs used the Tower as an instrument of control would make an interesting and worthwhile study. It could also develop an understanding of the ways in which the Tower’s reputation as a place of torture and execution was enhanced by the work of nineteenth-century novelists and artists.
However, the enquiry question leaves quite a few aspects of the Tower’s history unexplored. If you used this question to structure your site study you would need to ensure that other dimensions of the site were also studied e.g. the reasons for its creation, its changing use over time, the diverse activities at the Tower, its importance and typicality at different points in time.
- Stones and stories. What can the buildings of the Tower of London reveal?
This enquiry question may not have the instant appeal of the first, but the combination of title and question creates curiosity. The question focusses the study directly on the physical remains of the site. This is particularly helpful as all exam questions on the History Around Us paper require students to support their answers using specific features at the site. In addition, the broad nature of the enquiry question means that students could potentially build their knowledge and understanding of the site in relation to all the criteria for the History Around Us study.
An engaging end product for the enquiry should add to your students’ enjoyment of their site study. The end product should answer the enquiry question, and allow students to communicate their knowledge and understanding of the site in a rigorous and creative way. A range of end products could potentially provide a challenging and motivating end point for your students’ enquiry:
- An audio-guide for the site
- A plan for a new TV documentary about the history of the site
- A guide book for primary school children
- A plan for a touch-screen display on different parts of the site
- A new exhibition on changes at the site
- A set of new interpretation panels.
Your students could choose their end product from a list of options. At the end of the enquiry they could share their work with the rest of the class or with a wider audience.
When you have decided on an enquiry question, and know what the end point of the enquiry will be, you can then set about planning a rigorous and engaging sequence of learning activities. It’s probably best to think of these in three phases:
- Preparatory lessons to stimulate interest, build knowledge and raise questions in relation to the overall enquiry
- Fieldwork activities that will make students’ site visit enjoyable and worthwhile
- Follow-up activities which allow students to dig deeper by using other sources and interpretations.
In their revision, students will need to develop a strong visual memory of the site it would be helpful to build classroom activities around images of the site, and to devise on-site activities which require students to take their own photographs of the site.
Some useful resources
From OCR
From SHP
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.