Monaghan, Michael. "Having 'Great Expectations' of Year 9: Inter-disciplinary Work Between English and History to Improve Pupils’ Historical Thinking.” (2010)

What scope does studying a classic novel in both English and history provide for meaningful cross-curricular work and how might engaging with historical fiction help pupils engage more effectively with the realities of the past? Monoghan reports on a cross-curricular project and reflects on successes and lessons learned. The characters, settings and story lines of Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” were used to encourage pupils to explore the extent and nature of similarity and difference in the early 19th century. Pupils were encouraged to ‘go with the grain of the evidence’ – the story giving a focus to the students’ historical research. Considerable logistical challenges were overcome to produce an integrated scheme of work, each lesson focussing on a particular theme, using a range of sources, so that pupils searched ‘doggedly’ for evidence that would allow their writing to create a more vivid picture of the past. The novel helped pupils unlock good, complex history, whilst feeding back a greater understanding into English, with many pupils achieving their best grades for the year.