One aspect of assessing History which has interested me increasingly of late has been the application of a summative History Oral. We use language, questioning, discussion, presentation extensively within the teaching of History but we seem to priorities written forms of communication as the standard for summative assessment.

To remedy this, and trial the impact of such an approach to summative assessments within History, I have designed a process which will see 180 students of History prepare and communicate knowledge, understanding and skills, developed across a year, in a scripted 3 minute oral presentation.

Below I outline the steps and give a brief justification for the purpose of each within the assessment process.

Step 1: Students will choose a historical topic-period. The topic can be anything they have studied over the year or any topic they are interested in/passionate about, as long as they can identify it as broadly historical…