Today, Bolder Academy needs to say a huge thank you to @alfdubs.bsky.social
Year 10 & 11 (& staff) were totally wowed!
Loads of students stayed behind to shake Alf’s hand and thank him for his service, or ask (brilliant) questions.
I felt immensely proud of our brilliant ‘bold’ kids

Again, I find students can find making sense of the power the medieval Church could command tricky.
It’s seems obvious to me that, whilst simple, illustrations like these could help.

We zoom in, then, we zoom out. I’ve found the latter tricky in the past when getting students to think about the power of medieval monarchs.
Tables like this one could offer such simple ways of managing this.
5/6

Change after the Norman Conquest. OK minor updates required, but, the illustration is, I think, lovely.

Right now, post reflecting on just how memorable this can be (if just for me at least…) making plans potentially use bits and bobs in my own history classroom.
Saxon rebellions and the Norman Conquest - what a map!
3/6

Today’s reading.
Full of nostalgia for me. It’s the textbook I most remember (with f fondness) from my own school days with my inspiring history teacher, Mrs Blacksland.
The illustrations, the stories, cartoons - brilliant!

Gloucestershire - God’s own county.
It’s in verse. It must be true.

If you haven’t already, get yourself to the ‘Medieval Women in their Own Words’ exhibition at the @britishlibrary.bsky.social. I spent a lot of my visit ‘fanboying’ Melisende…

🤦‍♂️ Oh dear.

Going full circle, applying the principles from the book to all above, & everything else we’ve been working on, has been crazy liberating.
Bolder history’s mantra has been ‘less is more’ this term.
Focus on conceptual progression & let good stories ‘sing’. It’s been really liberating.

Year 12 enjoyed dressing up too. As always, @historyrichk.bsky.social’s First Crusade simulation was a barrel of laughs & consolidated understanding of a relatively simple, but detailed narrative.

Even our own Mr Shenton dressed up for his year 10s…

While on Vikings-we kept our annual visit to ‘Birka’s market’.
In fact, we ‘visited’ several times this year.
Students saw how trade goods arriving in the town grew more exotic across time as the Vikings expanded east and west.

Have had a long social media hiatus…
Breaking cover - what have history been doing at Bolder?
We’ve been massively enjoying (& so have year 7) using the new @counsellc.bsky.social et. al. textbook.
Great stories, lovely illustrations, beautifully simplistic focus prog. in concepts. Cracking!

I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean…