Investigating Victorian mining disasters

Lesson Plan

By Paul Sutton, published 15th January 2011

Please note: these free resources pre-date the 2014 National Curriculum. 

In this series of lessons about two mining disasters, I integrated learning in history, literacy and ICT. As the children are an able group, I intended to challenge them to explore primary written sources, to identify differences between them, to reconstruct family groupings affected by the second disaster, to give dramatic interpretations of the historical event described, and finally to write with both feeling and accuracy about it.

My class of Year 6 children had already studied aspects of Victorian Britain, including Child labour in the cotton industry. In September, as an introduction to the period, we visited the Black Country Museum in Dudley, which included a trip down a Victorian coal mine.

To teach these lessons using ICT you need to construct a database from information given on the Durham Mining Museum website 

Related lessons on this site
Down the mine
Child labour in the textile factories

Teaching methods
Reading documents

Speaking and listening

Chidren writing

Drama and role play

Background information for teachers
Teaching Victorian Britain

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