Brilliant Teaching in A-Level History

ABOUT THIS COURSE

This new practical course focuses on strategies and approaches in teaching and learning, to embed a culture of high expectations, high challenge and high achievement in A-Level History. Aimed for teachers in their first 3 years of teaching A-Level History and those wanting to refresh their practice, the course will cover teaching methods and approaches that maximise high achievement and includes memorisation, retrieval, interleaving, deep practice, flipped learning, effective study strategies, spaced repetition, flashcards, apps and more. This course absolutely guarantees refreshed, creative approaches and take away strategies to enhance teaching and learning in A-Level History.

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BENEFITS OF ATTENDING

• Use key findings from the latest exam series to address national areas of weakness
• Explore practical classroom activities to bring theory lessons to life
• Develop creative strategies to accelerate learning and raise standards
• Take away numerous learning strategies to ensure optimised deliberate practice
• Take away innovative strategies to improve performance of students of all ability levels
• Gain insights on how to stretch and challenge high ability students
• Develop proven revision strategies based around cognitive History research

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The Assessment Demands for Top Grade Outcomes in A-Level History

10.00am

• What are the barriers to attaining high grades from the most recent exam?
• What is required to achieve a top band mark and how do we get there
• The importance of planning – how can this be completed in the exam environment?

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Break

10.45am

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Fresh and Innovative Strategies for Teaching A-Level History

11.00am

• The benefits of a flipped learning methodology for History
• Using the Cornell method for interrogating screencast notes
• Maximising deliberate practice and high order thinking time in lessons

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Motivating and Engaging Low Ability Students

11.30am

• Understand the difference between low effort/low performance and high effort/low performance
• Engage low effort/low performance students by actively stimulating cooperative learning strategies
• Help high effort/low performance students improve performance by modelling the use of high impact study strategies which prioritise ‘thinking hard’
• Provide unique memorisation strategies to help low ability students retain information

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Strategies to Promote Retrieval, Spacing and Interleaving

12.15pm

• Memory platforms – lesson starters that maximise retrieval, interleaving and synoptic links
• Memory platform examples
• Potential synoptic links between knowledge and skill acquisition
• Planning for interleaving, spacing and retrieval to stretch and challenge
• Spaced practice

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Lunch

1.00pm

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Stretching and Challenging your More Able Students

2.00pm

• Coach your students on the advanced use of the Leitner System and spaced/repetition flashcard-based apps such as Anki and Quizlet
• Encourage students to create effective study materials
• Strategies to promote ‘high order thinking skills’ not ‘more of the same’
• Analysing A* responses to increase opportunities for high grades

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Break

2.45pm

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Unpicking the Exam Questions and Developing Top Level AO Evaluation Skills

2.50pm

• Examples of model answers for discussion
• How to support students in developing AO application skills
• Examining the balance of assessment objectives
• Using the language of the exam/grade descriptors

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Exam Revision and Technique

3.20pm

• Separating common content and skills mistakes
• Applying simple but highly effective exam technique strategies to ensure high performance
• Teaching and Learning strategies to improve AO skills
• Memory, practice and myelin – the foundation of high achievement
• Look into the science underpinning deliberate practice revision techniques such as dual coding and interleaving

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Depart

3.50pm