Please note: This article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated. Classic fiction provides useful sources of information for investigating the lives, beliefs and values of people in the past. In this article Ann Cowling describes activities undertaken with student teachers which may also serve as models...

Children develop their understanding of the past through a range of historical sources of evidence. Written sources may provide different types of information for children to work from. Records such as census returns or street directories provide information about families and tradespeople living in a particular communities and old maps...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated. Visual images, paintings, sculpture, photographs, cartoons from past times are important historical sources. Accordingly, Simon Schama embeds visual images and imagery in his historical oeuvre, not primarily as illustration but as a crucial...