Curriculum Issues
The history curriculum is riddled with issues to consider, from the content, to concepts and processes related to history, to the whole school issues that need to be considered as they relate to the history curriculum. In this section you will find articles, resources and guidance helpfully broken down into the different issues and areas that affect the planning and delivery of history in schools.
Planning
- Back to basics: what does a good history lesson look like?
- Film: Picturing the past (and the future)
- Extending the curriculum: why should we consider ‘value added’?
- Epistemic insights: bringing subject disciplines together
- The Elizabeth cake
- Teaching crime and punishment as a post-1066 theme
Interpretations
- Re-evaluating the role of statues
- Storytelling the past
- Film: What's the wisdom on...Historical Interpretations (Primary)
- Using different sources to bring a topic to life: The Rebecca Riots
- Scheme of Work: Grace O'Malley
- Getting to grips with concepts in primary history
Change and continuity
- Film: What's the wisdom on...Change and continuity (Primary)
- Migration to Britain through time
- The Elizabeth cake
- Turning technology: making life better in Iron Age Britain
- Teaching crime and punishment as a post-1066 theme
- Making the most of a census
Causation
- Film: What's the wisdom on...Causation
- The Elizabeth cake
- Getting to grips with concepts in primary history
- The Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings: push, pull, cause and consequence
- To boldly go: exploring the explorers
- Ancient Sumer
Significance
- Local significant individuals
- Making the most of a census
- Getting to grips with concepts in primary history
- One of my favourite history places: Fulham Palace
- A trail of garnet and gold: Sri Lanka to Anglo-Saxon England
- Using the back cover image: Mummified cat
Chronological Understanding
- ‘Come all ye fisher lassies’
- A cultural legacy: the theatre of ancient Greece
- Ankhu and Nebu of Deir el Medina
- Developing early history skills and understanding through the EYFS
- The Elizabeth cake
- ‘Miss, did the Romans build pyramids?’
Inclusion
- Re-evaluating the role of statues
- Migration to Britain through time
- Primary History Summer Resource 2019: Diversity
- Three first-class ladies – teaching significant individuals in Key Stage 1
- Ideas for assemblies: LGBT History Month
- World War I: widening relevance in the modern world
Using Sources
- Re-evaluating the role of statues
- Film: What's the wisdom on...Evidence and sources (Primary)
- Using different sources to bring a topic to life: The Rebecca Riots
- Knowledge-rich approaches to history
- The Elizabeth cake
- Teaching sensitive subjects: slavery and Britain’s role in the trade
Similarity & difference
- Pandemics in history: similarity and difference
- Migration to Britain through time
- Developing early history skills and understanding through the EYFS
- Teaching crime and punishment as a post-1066 theme
- Making the most of a census
- How can old advertisements be used in the primary classroom?
Diversity
- Re-evaluating the role of statues
- Migration to Britain through time
- Scheme of Work: Grace O'Malley
- Primary History Summer Resource 2019: Diversity
- Three first-class ladies – teaching significant individuals in Key Stage 1
- Ideas for assemblies: LGBT History Month
Big Picture
- Epistemic insights: bringing subject disciplines together
- ‘Miss, did the Romans build pyramids?’
- The Blitz: All we need to know about World War II?
- Trade and pilgrimage in the Abbasid Caliphate
- Siege coins of the English Civil War
- Having fun through time
Controversial issues
- Migration to Britain through time
- Teaching sensitive subjects: slavery and Britain’s role in the trade
- Writing books for young children about the First World War
- Is There a Place for The Holocaust in the Primary Curriculum?
- Ideas for Assemblies: Refugee stories
- Primary history and British values
Literacy
- Storytelling the past
- Primary History summer resource 2020: Historical Fiction
- Historical fiction: it’s all made up, isn’t it?
- Embedding progress in historical vocabulary teaching
- Texts for the Classroom: Ma’at’s Feather
- Using Horrible History to develop primary literacy and history