In February last year I attended the residential course “Exploring the Holocaust” hosted by the Holocaust Education Trust (which I would 100% recommend, and not in the least because I made a fantastic new friend @evieerosee). I’d already studied the Holocaust in quite some depth at university but having someone make explicit links between academic interpretations and the realities of classroom teaching threw me into a frenzy of lesson planning jitters; I’d overhauled our sequence before the first day was out. This post is a summary of 5 top takeaways from that week, mostly concerning misconceptions in my own knowledge and a few new ideas about the delivery of material. I will also outline my initial aims in creating a sequence of lessons that aims to do justice – or thereabouts – to the progress that academic historians have made in analysing the Holocaust.

1: What is your definition of the Holocaust?

The HET definition of the Holocaust is “the Holocaust was the attempt by Nazi Germany and its collaborators to murder all the Jews”. We were encouraged to debate and challenge this definition so that we understood exactly what it meant. Personally, I would change the word ‘attempt’ because I don’t believe it reflects the extent to which genocidal intent was realised. The less nit-picky argument, however, centres on whether the definition of the Holocaust should reflect the religion and culture that the Nazis were trying to eradicate, or whether it should reflect the cultures that were actually impacted, and therefore include the wide range of other victim types and geographical span. In approaching a sequence, do you also agree that it should be referred to as ‘the Holocaust’, or is there a name that you feel is more appropriate to the history you are presenting, such as Shoah? The Nazis referred to it as ‘the Final Solution’ and Holocaust was a post-war term, something that is cultural/religious/political, but not historical. In lesson planning, you should be clear about exactly what you are presenting.

2: There are different spheres of the Holocaust and genocidal atrocity looks different in each

Not only do you have the difference between genocide against the Jews and genocide against other groups, but I did not realise that there is a difference between genocidal atrocity in Western Europe and in Eastern Europe. In the West it was characterised by the use of infrastructure: transportation across large distances, transit camps, and systematic extermination. In the East, genocidal atrocity took the face of the Einsatzgruppen, killing in local communities, and mass shootings – around 2 million of the total number of victims were murdered in this way. There were different ways of killing and committing genocide, some that were murder but some that were biological or cultural. Different killing technologies were used, some that developed through the murder of non-Jewish target groups (such as the disabled) and culminated, particularly in Auschwitz, in atrocity that targeted Jewish people specifically. Further, genocidal atrocity against Jews is different in intent and nature to genocidal atrocity against other ‘untermensch’ communities; that anti-Jewish policy even inside the same camp was a different phenomenon. 

3: The camp system is endlessly complex 

Nikolaus Wachsmann led a session on the camp system, during which I was thoroughly starstruck because I owned his book but also fascinated because I hadn’t actually read the book. He talked us through the function of the Konzentrationslager System (KL) as a web of terror but still inspired by a prison system. Prisoners were transported from one camp to another based on the need for labour or space. The camps were presented to occupied territories as necessary, and they evolved in function and design alongside developments in the terror organisation and the state’s anti-threat policy. There is a huge difference between the early camps and the camps of the 1940s, and Auschwitz stands unique in itself. Through an understanding of the KL system we can more accurately analyse the development of the Holocaust and the Final Solution – we can take a more critical approach to the relationship between the camps and the Holocaust. Wachsmann argues that they are intertwined but the Holocaust was not the defining moment for the camps, which is important for students going on to study Germany further. 

Wachsmann also has a fantastic website http://www.camps.bbk.ac.uk/ with incredible maps, timelines and resources for use in schools. You should visit it.

4: The Holocaust is uniquely placed in KS3 to do skills work on sources

There are undoubtedly people who would criticse any exploitation of the Holocaust for the benefit of exams, but the reality is that most schools can’t dedicate enough time to the Holocaust to do it justice – I’m very lucky in that I get 11 lessons but others barely have 4. Personally, I think that the best way of bartering more time in the SOW is to focus on GCSE skills throughout the sequence, particularly for those delivering Germany. Dr Jenny Carson led a session on using oral testimony and made the point that survivor testimony, whilst authentic, is, for many reasons, not always accurate of the macro story of the Holocaust – testimony can be generic because it’s difficult to articulate emotion, sometimes it is shaped by public expectation, it is different because each survivor survived differently, and memory is a complicated thing. By maintaining a focus on source analysis and the factors that have shaped these testimonies, students could practise CNOP-OK (or whatever your letters are) with human and engaging sources that they are emotionally invested in. Further, it might help put in a pin in their assumption that a source isn’t useful because it doesn’t mention something – students would never suggest that of a survivor, they’re ready to learn whatever they can because they understand how lucky we are to have these voices. 

5: Misconceptions and open ended questions 

Cat Kirkland led a lesson based on her doctoral research about the knowledge of the Holocaust in schools. She summarised that children have fragmented notions of the Holocaust that come from encounters external to school, such as watching The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas. In order to fill in the gaps accurately teachers should ask open questions to allow misconceptions and confusion to be apparent. In addressing these, teachers should use different types of persecution from different places. Dr Alasdair Richardson also added that emotion is an unavoidable and necessary part of Holocaust education, whichever angle you approach it from. Open ended questions allow children to explore the debate on their own terms, explore the emotions they feel, and truly reflect on the material being presented. We can’t ever get history truly right, particularly when it comes to something as unfathomable as the Holocaust, so the way this history is experienced is just as important to shaping students’ conclusions as the historical skills themselves. 

To that end, my priorities for a sequence of lessons are thus: 

1. Deliver a sequence that marks the differences between genocidal atrocity against different victim types in different geographical spheres in order to cultivate a nuanced understanding of Nazi atrocity. This includes problematising perpetrators and their conceptualisation of the events. 
2. Provide a wide range of sources and examples from across Nazi-occupied territory to analyse the balance of activity between an agressive Nazi state and complicity from the “ordinary men”, including an analysis of grassroots anti-semitism that did not begin or end with Nazism
3. To implement an analytical, historical study of atrocity in the years c.1933-c.1945 with a focus on academic interpretation and source-work

Huge thanks to @CallieNoir for patiently talking me through these ideas – now, and in the five years since we met – even when she’s been torturously close to deadlines (congratulations on finishing, by the way!)

@RidleyHistory

Bibliography and further reading: 

• Nickolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, 2015
• https://www.het.org.uk/ – The Holocaust Education Trust 

I am always on the lookout for films, documentaries and clips that can explain historical events better than I can, or offer different perspectives and convey a message. With that in mind, I thought it would be useful to share a collection of my favourite ones with an explanation of how I use them and how they work for me, as a few of them relate specifically to my GCSE teaching (Edexcel Crime and Punishment throughout time c1000-present, Superpower Relations and the Cold War 1941 – 1991, Early Elizabethan England 1558 – 1588, and Russia and the Soviet Union 1917 – 1943). Two of the entries on this list unfortunately don’t have links as I have them on DVD and can’t find them on Youtube, however, they are both on Clickview, which you can get a free trial to use or buy a subscription (which I recommend). I plan for this to be part 1 of many lists on films/documentaries/clips that I use, but for now, here are 6 that stand out. 

1: Thirteen Days

This film is utterly fantastic for teaching the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’ve found in my experience that however many times you emphasise how tense the thirteen days were, they never quite get it. This film is absolutely brilliant at showing how the Americans were trying to guess the next move of the Soviets, and how Kennedy was being pulled in two different directions between the hawks and doves. The film is fast moving and detailed, so I teach the Cuban Missile Crisis first, up to the end of the Thirteen Days. This gives them a solid schematic base with which to approach the film, and further secure their knowledge, before we move onto the consequences. This way, students already have a framework to hook the new knowledge onto. It really gets across just how dramatic this event was in a way that’s enjoyable and exciting; my pupils never struggle with a narrative account question involving the Cuban Missile Crisis after watching this. Not to mention, it gives you a healthy dose of Kevin Costner fabulousness…

2: Bloody Queens

This is one of my favourite documentaries of all time. It is a dramatised masterpiece detailing the relationship between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots through their letters, and the portrayals are brilliant and enthralling. Historians examine and interpret the letters, and provide the context throughout the documentary. It includes Elizabeth’s hesitation to deal with Mary, the Revolt of the Northern Earls, and the 3 plots. It fits perfectly with our studies for Early Elizabethan England 1558-1588. We watch the video during Key Topic 1, when Mary, Queen of Scots, first pops in the course. The pupils then complete an A3 knowledge organiser and it puts us in a great position to start Key Topic 2, which begins with the Revolt of the Northern Earls.

3: Fun, Animated History of the Reformation and the Man Who Started It All

This little 5-minute video is a brilliant introduction to the Reformation. I use it with both KS3 and KS4. With KS3, it fits into a scheme of learning based on the Tudors. I’ve used it in two different ways: as part of a lesson on the Break with Rome, and as a starting point for an enquiry into religious changes under the Tudors. At KS4, it serves its purpose perfectly for contextual knowledge when teaching the Religious Settlement. It’s fun, it’s accessible, it’s memorable, and it makes the kids laugh. I have found that it becomes increasingly useful throughout the Early Elizabethan England course, as we turn our attention to Spain and the Spanish Netherlands. The course includes the Spanish Inquisition and Counter-Reformation, and as the video has laid the foundation of the Reformation tearing Europe apart, I find the students have more of an understanding of the events as they unfold.

4: The Days That Shook The World: Kristallnacht

I should say, firstly, that I only use the first 27 mins 40 secs of this. This documentary is brilliant for pupils to gain a deeper understanding of the events of Kristallnacht and how the violence against Jews escalated. It fits in my scheme of work on Nazi Germany/The Holocaust for Year 9, but I have also given it as homework to my A-Level pupils as we study Germany 1918 – 1989. It is a dramatised re-telling of the events of the night and includes personal stories. One example is Oscar Gompertz; his story provides a fantastic discussion opportunity with the pupils. As SS officers raided Oscar’s home, he held up his Iron Cross medal from the First World War, the same medal that Hitler received in the same war, and shouted ‘is this the thanks I get for serving the Fatherland?’. After staring at each other for a few moments, the SS officers left. In just 10 years, they have gone from comrades in arms to enemies. It answers questions such as “why didn’t they just leave?” and “didn’t they know what was happening?” This documentary provides a great starting point for discussion when I find it so difficult to find the right words in lesson.

5: The Black Death and Ratatouille

I love this little clip so much. As the leader of a Disney Club at my school, if there is any way to get Disney into History lessons legitimately, then I am going to do it. But this clip does actually provide a brilliant introduction to the way the Black Death spread across Europe. I usually play this clip right at the beginning of the scheme of work in Year 7, and then get the pupils to write a summary of its contents. I find that pupils have gained a lot from the two short minutes the video runs for and write comprehensive summaries. It’s fun, the pupils enjoy watching it, and it’s educational. 

6: Battlefield Britain: The Battle Against the Spanish Armada

This is another documentary that I love for the Early Elizabethan England course. Dan and Peter Snow’s television programmes are brilliant, in my opinion. They use their trademark, fold-out CGI battleground to show the battle at various stages. Their expert explanations of the events and political circumstances surrounding them help to build a real picture of the events. We begin with studying England’s relations with Spain and how they descended into war, and then watch this. In class, I have a question sheet that goes along with the video that they fill in as we watch. I conclude by getting the pupils to make a judgement on which factors were the most crucial to victory with explanations.

Hope you find this useful!

@MissHBHistory x

1 – Get yourself a buddy

2 – Count them in, count them out

Equipment will disappear into the night like it has legs, fact. Some people swap a piece of equipment for a treasured possession, some tally on the board and don’t let anyone leave until they have everything back – I refer to my gluesticks as little yellow babies and laugh as Year 7 lovingly count eight Henrys, two Elizabeths, three Richards, and one Matilda back into their cots (it gets very dark very quickly when the glue runs out and the ‘babies’ die). 

4 – Never underestimate Year 7

They are wonderful creatures. Yes, you’ll start – and probably finish – the year tearing your hair out because they can’t function unless you tell them the title as soon as they walk in the room, but they are gems. Year 7 are so willing to think and because of that they are capable of so much. If you can wade through the months of “miss, I’ve finished this page. Can I write on the next one?” then they’ll supply you with a constant supply of #thisiswhyiteach moments and some very impressive work. 

5 – You’ve got buttons that you don’t know about, so anticipate and be ready for it

In September of NQT I had my own classroom and my own career to take ownership of, but I was also under-confident with behaviour management and the mixture made my temper very volatile. Just simple things like not shutting my door when they were late could send me off my rocker, and I had to put a lot of effort into fixing relationships with some children because of it. Once I became aware that this was happening it was easier to consciously put on the act and develop strategies to anticipate and manoeuvre those moments (but seriously, were you born in a barn). 

5 – Observe other teachers with a specific focus

6 – Adopt a system for marking that can be typed, especially for KS3

Obviously it has to fit with your specific marking policy, but I use print outs that have pre-prepared generic, spelling and grammar instructions, and one large box where I can write individual feedback tasks. There are so many good templates on twitter – @KKNTeachLearn uses numbered feedback sheets and all she writes in their books is spelling mistakes and two numbers – they do all the legwork.

7 – Live mark constantly

8 – Don’t be intimidated by people in the department that have more experience than you, just take that opportunity to learn from them. 

9 – Prioritise.

Obviously you have to be ready for every lesson because that’s the job, but there is such a thing as doing too much. My slides, for example, take a lot of time to put together because there’s coloured boxes, cartoons, a certain font, arrows for challenges … etc … but that’s unnecessary. At the end of the day, what’s important is the progress that the class is making and that you feel well enough to teach them … so if you’ve got a few bullet points on a powerpoint and you get an extra hour’s sleep then get the extra hour’s sleep. I firmly believe that the teacher is the most powerful resource so the kids need you more than they need a picture of a cartoon peasant.

10 – You don’t have to beat yourself or anyone else in your first year

You’ve got nothing to prove because everyone knows how hard NQT is, especially NQT in a school you didn’t train in. You’re not expected to take on extra work or extra courses or apply for promotions. You’re not falling behind. People tell me this all the time and I still don’t quite believe them, but they are right. It’s like the kids – you can’t exceed your target until you hit your target, and your target is qualifying. 

Good luck!

@RidleyHistory

As A-Level teachers, we are constantly wondering if we’re teaching in the most effective way possible.

The Germany course that I teach is assessed thematically, with 4 themes spanning the whole time period, but I have often wondered whether ‘thematically’ is the right way to teach it (Edexcel Route G Germany 1918-1989 with Italy 1911-1946). It’s been particularly difficult because, in my department of two, I am the only one delivering it and haven’t had anyone to discuss ideas with.

After extensive research, engaging with A-Level support groups , and perseverance I landed on teaching the course chronologically. However, I then found that students struggled with the essay questions, not always drawing on appropriate evidence and struggling with change over time.

10 months ago I decided to subject myself to weekly squash coaching. This was not related to teaching in the slightest but because I was losing with incredible consistency. Nonetheless, it had an unanticipated impact on my approach to ‘the struggle zone” because frankly, I struggled. I had forgotten how hard it is to learn something from scratch – be it squash or exam technique – and what it feels like to get worse before you get better. 

I knew, objectively, that I needed to do things like relay cognitive pathways so I could process what I was being asked to do, and do it instinctively all at once. I knew that there was a difference between theory and practise. I would listen to the coach and think ‘schemata’, ‘metacognition’, ‘modelling’, ‘feedback’, ‘reflection’, but actually improving so that I won a point (or a mark) was something different. I would recommend – providing you can find time – occasionally taking up something entirely new, if only because it is quite a humbling reminder of what it feels like to learn. 

The whole experience tested my resilience and gave me a deeper understanding of those students who act up or refuse because they believe that they can’t do it; my lack of coordination was their equivalent of a vocabulary gap, for example. These are my top 3 takeaways and the few ideas I have for applying them to my teaching practise:

1: Move your feet

Every coach I have ever had – whatever the sport – could have printed this on a banner and saved their voice. You have to move your feet so that you are in the right position to return the ball, and you have to keep moving your feet so that you can anticipate the angle that the ball is going to come and adapt accordingly. My problem was that a) I’m very bad at angles, and b) I did not have enough knowledge of the game to be able to anticipate what was about to happen, be flexible, and approach it in different ways. It struck me that this was like encountering an exam question with a strange word that throws you off, or trying to answer a question when you revised something else. It comes back to performance predicated on secure knowledge. Luckily, I was reading Tom Sherrington’s interpretation of Rosenshine at that point (2019, p.12-13) and it gave me some ideas for revamping retrieval practise in order to make knowledge secure and malleable: 

1. Quick-fire targeted questioning as an AfL activity. To make this more substantial, students could work in small groups to test knowledge recall or their familiarity with exam requirements. They could score points for answering quickly or be deducted points for hesitation, thus giving an indication of how secure the knowledge is. 
2. Colour-coding cards when different questions are posed (rather than changing them around). It would then be easier to compare different sequences without having to re-sort and remember. 

2: Keep your eye on the ball 

Time and time again I learn the hard way that if my eye is not on the ball then I am going to miss it. Apparently, my one job was to focus on hitting the ball because if I was doing that, then any supplementary swings or body positions would become automatic. This was frustrating because nothing was automatic and I couldn’t even hit the squidgy little thing.

However, then I thought about learning to teach and how, as teachers, we hit multiple balls at once – we stop Katie (names changed, obviously) from drawing immaculate eyebrows on the corner of her book while we encourage Sam (who is shy and waiting for a diagnosis of dyslexia that we don’t know about) to participate in the lesson, while we stretch and challenge the group at the back of our overly large and mixed ability class. I couldn’t do this a year ago and sometimes I can’t do it now, but I’m getting better … and that’s because throughout the PGCE and my NQT year we’ve been encouraged to focus on certain standards and certain areas until we can eventually put it all together. The ball, therefore, is not the end goal, but the priority in that moment. 

This is a long-winded way of saying that I am a huge fan of splitting skills or knowledge into small chunks, focusing on them in isolation, and then returning to the whole performance. Helpfully, Sherrington can assist here too (2019, p.15-17). He reinforces the importance of splitting new information into small steps with student practise after each. I have been consciously doing this for a while – we were taught that our activities should build on each other, after all – but I think I need to be more extreme in the splitting. Ideas: 

1. Teach key vocabulary in isolation and have activities dedicated to putting these words into practise, e.g. spelling tests for homework, starters that require constructing sentences, and then bonus points in assessments where these words have been successfully used. 
2. Teach elements of skills before putting them all together, such as practising what makes a good ‘point’, what makes good ‘evidence’, what makes a good ‘explanation’ and ‘development’. A sequence could focus on the component parts of a PEED paragraph, using modelling and improving each part as a class. Put this all back together, and you could, for example, write a 12 mark question – a model PEED could be given for paragraph 1, paragraph 2 could be a simple PEED (Level 1 or 2) that the students improve, and paragraph 3 one that they write from scratch (this might also help reduce an over-reliance on sentence starters, which I am presently guilty of). 

3: Get back to the T 

This was an analogy that my despairing PGCE mentor tried when my behaviour management was in need of development and I’m very fond of it. It’s flexible and can be applied to any situation. In squash, after any shot, best practise is to return to the middle of the court so that you have the best chance of returning the next shot. In the context of the learning process, I would interpret it to mean that at the end of any task or question you need to re-set and approach anything new sitting calmly in the middle of all your knowledge and skills, like you never pinballed around the court trying to beat a 16 mark question that you didn’t really understand, or a class of 30 Year 7 that you’d given the upper-hand. Now, I could get back to the T because I have long legs … but I really struggled with letting mistakes go and approaching the next shot positively. 

This mostly relies on classroom culture and the environment for learning that individual teachers have fostered based on their own personalities and pedagogical approaches. I am going to try a very physical approach to this throughout the academic year by persuading students to have a small gesture that they do to ‘reset’, such as shaking their shoulders or rubbing their hands – something that won’t get them in trouble in the exam hall. Hopefully, this will trick their minds into resetting so that they might slide calmly back to the T and return whatever Edexcel/AQA etc. might serve at them.

Fingers crossed! @RidleyHistory

In the beginning we floated the idea of a blog on our love of history, how much we enjoyed talking about history, and a desire to engage more with the twittersphere and #educhat. We wanted to compare and contrast our experiences in a more analytical, useful way for our own benefit, and anyone else that might come across it. It didn’t happen because we didn’t have the courage. However, then we discovered 10% Braver: Inspiring Women to Lead Education (Vivienne Porrit, Keziah Featherstone, ed. 2019). 

The premise of the book is that women are underrepresented in education leadership and it theorises the reasons why at all levels of education, nationally and internationally, across cultures, and pay scales. It’s a fascinating book that we recommend you read right now, and has many complex conclusions and thought-provoking questions that you can grapple with. However, the book will say itself that every person – man or woman – will take away something different, something that is relevant to their own teaching career. As RQTs with little responsibility (comparatively) and no expectation of being a headteacher in the near future, we took one very simple thing from it: we needed to be 10% braver. 

Chapter 2 by Sue Cowley is dedicated to feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It explains that one explanation for the gender gap in education is that, in many cases, women feel under-confident and do not go after what they want in the same way that a man might. It’s an inspirational and blunt chapter that makes you confront your own personality, and whilst it might not apply to some women, it did to us. 

The book is built around the women that inspired these inspirational women, and Chapter Two ends with a personal role model of Cowley’s. We started to discuss the women that inspire us in our own lives, and, over a cup of tea and a jacket potato, we decided to be 10% braver. 

In that spirit, we would like to begin our blog with just two of the (very many) women in and outside of education that inspire us to be 10% braver, 10% prouder, and 10% louder (p,9). 

@MissHBHistory

@RidleyHistory