As a ‘choose your own homework<\/a>‘ option, suggest to students that they consolidate their chronological understanding by constructing a “Tubular Timeline Tower”.<\/p>\n In the February holidays, I give an open homework task <\/a>to students who will be taking public exams in May. I ask them to choose any topic that they are currently not very confident on, and produce a useful revision resource which demonstrates at least two hours of\u00a0thoughtful effort. In the past, and for students of Modern World History at IGCSE, they have chosen such ideas a a ‘TripAdvisor Graphic<\/a>‘ to illustrate successes and failures of the League of Nations, or have designed a children’s storybook<\/a>\u00a0covering the main events of Hitler’s foreign policy among many other things.<\/p>\n Another idea, which history student Jade came up with recently, was to go through the entire IGCSE Modern World History course and transform the main events and themes into a timeline, with each one covered in one “pot” of a joined up tower. On the cover of each pot was a title and the date, and inside a series of colour-coded revision cards covering such things as key events, main personalities and their significance, and key terms for revision.<\/p>\n As well as being creative, the end result was thorough and academically rigorous: on which basis I think an excellent student like Jade is a fantastic reply to the sorts of educationalists who tiresomely insist that “progressive” and “traditional” approaches are somehow incompatible.\u00a0Here she is talking about her project further:<\/p>\nCase Study<\/h3>\n