Most of our A Level history centres are about to start teaching unit 3, historical themes. Its approach is unique to the OCR specification, and so many teachers new to our specification won’t have taught thematic history at A Level before. This unit is worth 40% of the overall grade, so here are five key things to remember to help make it a success:
1. Helicopters not trains
A staple line from our INSETs, but this analogy works. In their answers, students will
always need to give an overview of the whole period, picking out patterns and trends – imagine they are in a helicopter hovering above, rather than a train going from one event to the next. These two essay openings sentences demonstrate the difference:
Train:
The first major war of this period was the Revolutionary War. There were some important generals, especially Napoleon Bonaparte.
Helicopter:
Generalship was always important in war in the period 1792 – 1945 but its nature changed; by the end they were managers of large scale coalitions rather than battlefield leaders.
2. Synthesis is key
As the ‘helicopter’ approach suggests, synthesis is the key driver for the thematic essays. The
AS/A Level History A mark scheme shows that a
fully developed synthesis supporting a substantiated judgement is expected in the best answers. Synthesis simply means the ability to draw out and use evidence from over the period to support an argument. If the argument being made is that lack of unity was a major reason for the failure of opposition in Russia then an example of synthesis might be to compare the divisions of 1905 with the divisions of the whites in the Civil War. There should be regular comparisons and links throughout the answer, and although there isn’t the expectation the whole period should be covered in every paragraph, every paragraph should still be making links.
3. Wear your knowledge lightly...
Accurate knowledge is definitely necessary to support the synthesis, but remember that students will have only 45 mins per essay. So knowledge must be selective and applied flexibly: long examples will restrict the essay’s ability to cover the period and show synthesis. It is well worth keeping this in mind in your teaching: consider what candidates are never going to be asked to do (e.g. give a detailed account of every war between 1792-1945 or every Tudor Rebellion in chronological order or the life story of Martin Luther King).
4. ...but do answer the question set!
‘Pre-learned’ answers about the period in general won’t score highly, and unfortunately some students have fallen down there in the past. Students should read the question carefully and spend five minutes planning. Which thematic factors are they going to discuss (usually three or four), where are the all-important links, turning points etc. Crucially, every question will require a judgement (it’s part of the assessment objective): answers must build up to a substantiated conclusion about the issue in the question (‘Thus African American leaders can be seen to be only truly important at times when the Federal government was weak’.)
5. There's plenty of support available
Visit our
CPD hub – you can download last year’s pack for free, and book on to a comprehensive INSET programme for this autumn. Join one of our regional history networks (we’re having a GCSE focus in autumn, but you can also still ask about A Level), or post on our
social community forum.
To Conclude
We’ve only concentrated on the thematic essay part of Unit 3 here, in the next blog we'll look at the second part – the interpretations depth studies. I hope you and your students enjoy the unit and find it rewarding – the ‘big picture’ history it encourages can really help history make sense for students! If you have any questions you can always get in touch with us via
history@ocr.org.uk or via Twitter
@OCR_History
About the author
Mike Goddard - Subject Specialist - History
Mike is a history subject specialist and has worked at OCR on the history portfolio since 2007. Previously he has held roles at Cambridge International Examinations and for an educational publisher. Mike has a degree in Economic and Social History from the University of York and a Masters in Modern History from UCL. In his spare time he enjoys crosswords and snooker.