An Roinn Oideachais agus Eolaíochta
Department of Education and Science
Subject Inspection of History
REPORT
St. Mary’s Secondary School,
Charleville,
Roll number: 62450H
Date of inspection: 5 November, 2008
Subject provision and whole school support
Summary of main findings and recommendations
Report on the Quality of Learning and Teaching in History
Subject inspection report
This report
has been written following a subject inspection in
Subject provision and whole school support
St. Mary’s is a voluntary secondary school and as such offers History as a compulsory subject to Junior Certificate level. Owing to the school’s broad subject range and its policy of offering students some experience of all optional subjects before they make firm choices in junior cycle, History has tended to be timetabled for just two periods per week in first year. This presents some challenges in that the optimum provision in this year is considered to be three periods. However, good timetabling is evident in making sure that the two periods are well spaced on the timetable and generally in morning slots. The fact that the subject is allocated three single periods in both second year and third year, again well spaced on the timetable generally, is applauded.
Turning to senior cycle, Transition Year (TY) is optional at the school, although uptake levels are generally around two-thirds of the total year cohort. Within TY there is a compulsory History element for three periods across half a year for each of the two class groups. This is good provision, both in terms of time allocation and in keeping with the social studies aims of TY generally. In fifth-year and sixth-year History, there are three single periods and a double period for each class. This is also good provision, ensuring that there are four class-contact days each week for Leaving Certificate History and also that there is a double period which can facilitate student research-study work as required.
In fifth year and sixth year, History enters an options system, based on an open choice. The result of this fine system is that History has been placed in bands with other subjects and that these bands change annually according to demand. In the current fifth year, for example, History is offered along with Business, Physics and Music, with Business being offered in another slot as well. In sixth year, History is placed opposite Accounting, Chemistry and Biology, with the latter again being offered in a second slot. This is good provision. Students who opt for the Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme (LCVP) at the school do so after selecting their preferred subjects first, only then gauging whether they fit into any required vocational subject groupings (VSGs). This is not unfair to History, which continues to be excluded nationally from the VSGs, although the need to ensure that students are fully aware of the career relevance of Leaving Certificate History remains a constant. This should include the fact that the revised syllabus has subsumed Economic History and is more relevant to careers in business than might have been perceived heretofore.
History is well supported in a number of other ways. A beautiful library facility is currently being renovated and it is anticipated that a designated history section will feature strongly in it. At present, the provision of teacher-based classrooms has also ensured that very high levels of display and storage space for History have obtained, with most rooms having good provision in terms of overhead projectors, televisions and other relevant teaching equipment, while a laptop computer and data projector are available for use in History teaching as required. A well-positioned history noticeboard has been used to identify matters of career relevance and also historical anniversaries, and this practice is commended. Subject budgeting is considered as needs arise and is reported to operate satisfactorily. Some minor suggestions have been made in terms of resource development, and the school is highly commended for its proactivity in setting up a designated history folder on the school’s information and communication technology (ICT) network. This should assist in the development both of pooled resource banks in History and also in the use of ICT as a teaching aid into the future.
Planning and preparation
Subject planning on a formal level has made significant strides at St. Mary’s. A culture of holding subject planning meetings has been well established, with a number of meetings being held annually. These are structured and recorded appropriately and a designated subject co-ordinator is in place to oversee such work. Among the main issues discussed at planning meetings has been the identification of common targets for covering the course in different year groups, where practicable. The increasing emphasis within the department and the school on holding common formal assessments is applauded and dovetails nicely with the efforts to promote common termly and yearly plans through departmental meetings. Some good discussion has also taken place, reflecting on how best students with additional educational needs and newcomer students can be supported in history lessons. This is good, reflective practice, and the sourcing of materials from the school’s own learning support department has been another positive development. A very thorough subject plan has been developed, as has a TY history plan which includes excellent personalised and local approaches to History, and these are highly commended. The department has also given consideration to the matter of raising uptake levels in senior History over time, again showing the pro-active nature of planning. Ongoing consideration of the performance of history students in State examinations, and of comparison with national norms, has also been evident in discussions. So has the monitoring of uptake levels in higher and ordinary level papers, again showing the department’s commitment to self evaluation. Use of the Department of Education and Science (DES) report, Looking at History, as a further aid to self evaluation is also recommended.
In terms of suggestions on departmental planning, the
pooling of individual teachers’ resources to be stored on DVD, or ideally in
electronic folders as previously mentioned, has been recommended for
consideration. There is also merit in the team discussing the rotation of roles
within the department in order to ensure that as many members as possible are
actively involved. This could include the rotation of co-ordination duties, of
attendance at
At individual levels, teachers’ planning and preparation for lessons has been found to be of a consistently high standard. Most teachers have their own baserooms and the level of equipment in these rooms, including the availability of a data projector as required, has been commended. Very high levels of subject-specific décor have been found in most classrooms visited, contributing significantly to an overall historical ambience in the rooms. All lessons were well structured and took account of time management and resource-management issues, with some excellent levels of resource-preparation being evident. Handouts, acetate sheets, records of students’ performance, storage of students’ project work and the relevance of material to the appropriate syllabus in History were all further evidence of a fine commitment to thorough preparation and planning by all subject teachers.
Teaching and learning
A very positive work ethic was evident in all
classrooms visited. Teachers, being largely room-based, invariably had
everything needed for the lessons ready in advance, and students arrived in a
timely and orderly fashion. Seating arrangements and sightlines to the board or
screen were good. Isolated suggestions have been made about some acoustic
issues and seating arrangements. However, in general, classroom organisation
was very good in all lessons. Lessons opened in a bright and brisk manner in
all cases, invariably in very well appointed and decorated classrooms.
Students’ behaviour and attentiveness were impeccable and a productive, most
friendly teacher-student rapport obtained from the start in all lessons
observed. Sometimes, teachers placed the key learning aim of a lesson on the
board, or used an interrogative statement to promote enquiry-based learning;
both of these strategies are applauded and recommended for further use. Some
topical material, from images to newspaper headings, chiefly relating to the
historic
In general lesson development, the pitch, including
the language register, of all lesson content was very good, in keeping with the
age profile and mixed-ability nature of the class groups themselves. Some
recommendations have been made to promote more use of the whiteboard to
highlight key words, especially new or difficult terms, in the context of
mixed-ability teaching, and these have happily been taken on board when
offered. While some recommendations have been made in support of promoting
student activity on occasion, as a rule some very good teaching strategies were
noted in assisting students to become engaged in their own learning from the
off. These included a term-matching task on Celtic Ireland used as a warm-up
activity, paired role-play work around some characters central to the English
Reformation and a ballot-box exercise used as a means of helping engagement
around the quite complex political events in
Much of the dynamic which moved lessons forward revolved around questioning. In general, a fine mix of lower-order and higher-order questioning was used by teachers. Some recommendations have been made on issues like posing questions to individual students a little more, and perhaps tailoring some questions to the needs of more reticent individuals to encourage responses. However, as in other aspects of teaching and learning, the general level of the interrogative work observed in lessons has been very good. In one instance, it was good to note a teacher proactively asking who had not been involved in answering a question so far, ensuring optimum participation levels.
A very strong commitment to visual approaches in teaching has been observed and applauded in History at St. Mary’s. The whiteboard was well used in all lessons, to identify key words and also to help students with the structure of more complex issues, such as short-term and long-term factors in a topic, or the differences between two political or international groupings. In general, the development of text on the whiteboard was done in a simple and clearly structured way, assisting student comprehension readily. Very good use was made of overhead projectors to achieve similar goals in many lessons, while a DVD clip and developmental timeline around a classroom wall were other very useful visual features. It may be the case that additional visual supports could be used via textbook illustrations at times, or through a board sketch map as appropriate, but overall the emphasis on visual materials has been highly commended. Should the roll out of ICT equipment and usage be continued, naturally this will also provide an excellent vehicle for enhancing the overall approach to teaching History through visual stimuli.
A number of very good methods were employed to assist student learning and retention. The clarity of teachers’ explanations all through was excellent, with almost all new or difficult words being well explained, sometimes using students’ prior knowledge of other languages to reinforce understanding. The use of a simplex crossword as a review tool towards the end of a lesson, summary templates projected on an overhead projector, handouts of key details and the marking of key points in a textbook were all observed and noted as good methods of aiding student retention. In some lessons, students were encouraged to make notes of key issues, and in others students retained very well-organised folders of handouts, tests and other items which were designed to ensure longer-term learning. These are applauded and simply recommended for wider use as practicable, within the context of the very good standards of teaching and learning observed throughout the inspection visit.
Assessment
As mentioned in the previous section, a good variety of questioning strategies was employed in all lessons, mixing open and closed questioning, and varying from individually directed ones to questions seeking volunteer answerers. A good emphasis was noted in several lessons on asking students on the “why” and “how” of History, not just on more factual issues like “when”, “where” and “who”. Within lessons, group work was also used to promote informal assessment and aid students’ learning and participation. This was done through tasks asking students to match historical lists and to work in pairs on short document-analysis assignments. While some specific recommendations have been made in relation to informal assessment of more challenged students, in the general scheme of things the degree to which in-class assessment functioned in History lessons, and promoted student participation and learning, was very good.
Students’ copybooks or project folders were examined in all classrooms visited. These showed a consistent level of homework assignment in all classes, with good levels of teacher monitoring or formative commentary as time permitted. The use of visual tasks in some junior homework assignments, and the focus on self-directed learning through project work in TY, have been particularly commended. The one recommendation of significance has been to focus more directly on significant relevant statements (SRSs), and on training students in their use, in how many of them would be required in an answer, and so on, as a means of developing skills of both writing good ‘History’ and in focusing on what is relevant to a particular question. In all lessons observed, very clear instructions were given to students about the homework tasks being assigned, including in most instances the reinforcement of this message in writing on the classroom whiteboard, which is good practice.
For reasons previously touched upon, the move towards more common formal assessment instruments in junior classes is applauded, for both Christmas and summer examinations. This is not done in third year at Christmas, due to the imminence of pre-examinations shortly after that, which is understandable. The school has good procedures in place for communication with parents around assessment outcomes and student progress, ranging form parent-teacher meetings annually for all year groups, written reports sent home after mid-term or term-end assessments, and the availability of management and teachers for individual consultations with parents as may be required.
Summary of main findings and recommendations
The following are the main strengths identified in the evaluation:
- Timetabling for History is satisfactory, with the exception of some tightness in first year due to the broad subject range on offer.
- Senior cycle subject options are fair to History and all other subjects, with the provision of History as a compulsory module in TY also being commended.
- Excellent supports have been provided for History, ranging form teacher baserooms, a designated history noticeboard, the revamped library and augmentation of ICT supports.
- Very good levels of department planning and individual teacher planning have been noted in History.
- The overall standard of teaching and learning observed during the inspection was very good, with excellent teacher-student rapport being at the core of this work.
- A good commitment to informal assessment and to structured formal assessment, including an increasing focus on common assessment, has been commended.
As a means of building on these strengths and to address areas for development, the following key recommendations are made:
- Departmental consideration of how best roles can be rotated, to include co-ordination tasks, subject promotion in senior cycle, and links with the HTAI and HIST, is recommended.
- Some recommendations have been offered on ways to promote student involvement in lessons further, in areas like the identification of lesson aims, questioning, and group work.
- The training of students in how to construct answers around significant relevant statements has been offered for consideration.
Post-evaluation meetings were held with the teachers of History and with the principal at the conclusion of the evaluation when the draft findings and recommendations of the evaluation were presented and discussed.
Published, February 2009