Rachel Cliffe
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rcliffe.bsky.social
Rachel Cliffe
@rcliffe.bsky.social
History Teacher, Chartered Teacher and Teacher Development Leader ✨ Looking to share and magpie ideas 💡
Wrapped up our India enquiry by answering the enquiry questions ‘What was India’s experience of British rule?’ Tried to avoid the positive/negative debate with students using their own adjectives to describe events they have studied ✍️🇮🇳
March 25, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Focus on Holocaust Historiography with Year 9 to finish our SOW, looking at the debate between intentionalist and functionalist historians and the challenges historians face studying the Holocaust ✍️📖
February 28, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Ah fab, it’s our first time through this unit so still tweaking it! Purple zone is a school wide policy where it’s a section of the lesson for independent learning and students grappling with challenging tasks.
February 6, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Continuing with our historiography focus in Year 8 we compared traditionalist and revisionist historians views on the British Raj. Lots of prep this time discussing the extracts and then questions which built in complexity to scaffold their responses ✍️
February 6, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Year 9 students reading an extract from Ian Kershaw 🙌 Still loving the guided reading template to encourage students to read like a historian 📖
January 30, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Thank you! I loved your presentation as well and definitely got me thinking about OCR B
January 28, 2025 at 6:20 PM
My Year 9 students keep getting a couple of key terms/events mixed up so I created this grid to try and tackle misconceptions head on! I decided to give them one definition of each to help them hut next time will leave some completely blank ✍️
January 28, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Rachel Cliffe
This time next week you could be enjoying the company of this motley crew! I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday #historyteacher #historyeducation. Just a few days left to get your ticket though so don't miss out on this fantastic CPD for primary and secondary history teachers ...
January 25, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Thank you to everyone who watched my @TTRHistory presentation on teaching degrees of change in History. I loved putting it together and being 10% braver 🙌 A fantastic morning of CPD!

PPT-https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VsqdNtvP35vplEROiiJqW2ALWpPkKF7o/mobilepresent?slide=id.p1
January 25, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Moving forward we need to recap the meaning of historiography, discuss the interpretations further before the independent work and provide more gateway questions. Also put the more complex interpretation second 😅 Diving into revisionist historiography on British Raj next 🧵/5
January 22, 2025 at 8:37 PM
Finally students worked independently to compare two different interpretations on the rebellion from different perspectives. The interpretations were the same but the tasks scaffolded so all students could access the work. There were some very impressive responses 🧵/4
January 22, 2025 at 8:37 PM
We then discussed why there’s been so much debate around the rebellion and students came up with some brilliant reasons including ignoring perspectives, selfish reasons and cultural differences 🧵/3
January 22, 2025 at 8:37 PM
Then explored what the word historiography meant and applied it to a timeline of historiography around the rebellion and how the name of the event has changed over time 🧵/2
January 22, 2025 at 8:36 PM
This week we explored historiography surrounding the Indian rebellion of 1857 as part of our new India depth study and students really rose to the challenge! 🙌 Initially we recapped what happened in the rebellion from the previous lesson🧵/1
January 22, 2025 at 8:35 PM
A classics retrieval starter with Year 8! The last lesson section was crucial as it hinged on the lesson so we went through those questions verbally and then students marked their chosen questions from the board 🤔💭🧠
January 20, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Amazing I will take a look 🙌 It is a juicy story to show how Elizabethan government worked!
January 17, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Still working on trying to make note taking at KS4 a bit more interesting. Today we did Earl of Essex storyboards as we read through his dramatic tale then linked his story to their wider knowledge on patronage, privy council and Elizabeth’s power 🎨✍️
January 16, 2025 at 8:47 PM
Attempting to bring a bit more fun into GCSE note taking with comic strips- the latest creation - the colony of Roanoke 😅🎨🖌️
December 17, 2024 at 9:04 PM
Amazing, so glad it was helpful!
October 16, 2024 at 7:45 PM
End of unit lesson with Year 10 this week for the first GCSE unit- knowledge audit, exam skills overview, exam question planning, example paragraph writing and students writing paragraphs independently 🙌
September 18, 2024 at 8:35 PM
Amazing, thank you!
September 18, 2024 at 8:35 PM
Introduced a new exam question style to Year 10 through good, better, best paragraphs. Students had to identify the key features of the paragraph and then explain which one was the best and why, before writing the next paragraph for the question independently/ withscaffolds ✍️
September 13, 2024 at 4:35 PM
Last week Year 7 learnt about the Celts and used artefacts to consider what they might reveal about Celtic lifestyles 🪙 #historyteacher #historicalartefacts #artefactsinhistory
September 9, 2024 at 4:50 PM
Introducing exam questions via I do, we do, you do in the first GCSE Lesson with Year 10 🙌 Hugely inspired by @petejackson.bsky.social blog that he shared
September 5, 2024 at 3:52 PM
Time for a re-introduction: I’m Rachel, a 0.6 History Teacher based in Leeds, Chartered Teacher and former Head of History. I’ve recently joined my school’s teaching and learning team and I’m passionate about educational research and sharing adaptable resources 👋 I will not look this glam tomorrow 😅
September 1, 2024 at 11:13 AM