The Stone Age to the Iron Age

British history at Key Stage 2 starts with the Stone Age. Historians and archaeologists disagree about when exactly the Stone Age started and ended, but an estimated date according to evidence is around 8-10,000 BC until 4000BC. Cheddar Man is the oldest complete human skeleton to be found in Britain, dating from 7150 BC. The Iron Age starts in around 200BC and has continued ever since! This unit therefore covers at minimum 8-10,000 years of history – you cannot possibly cover everything, so you have to pick and choose your enquiry question carefully. The emphasis of the unit of study is upon change which can be a useful guide to help you focus planning.

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  • Place-names and the National Curriculum for History

    Article

    Place-names, such as house or school names, are infinite in number and all around us. Every place-name may convey a message about the place. Often place-names record and celebrate local and national people, events and incidents, define what a place looked like in the past and how we used to...

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  • Pull-out Posters: Primary History 68

    Article

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  • Britain from the Iron Age to Robin Hood

    Article

    ‘...if children are to ever fully appreciate history the development of historical time has to be central to our teaching methodologies' This lesson aims to provide an overview of this period, developing pupils' sense of chronology and their understanding of cause and consequence. The context for these ideas comes from...

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  • Stone Age to Iron Age - overview and depth

    Article

    Stone Age to Iron Age covers around 10,000 years, between the last Ice Age and the coming of the Romans. Such a long period is difficult for children to imagine, but putting the children into a living time-line across the classroom might help. In one sense not a lot happens...

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  • Using the back cover image: Windmill Hill

    Article

    The back cover image is a reconstruction of prehistoric life based on the English Heritage site Windmill Hill. Such images are of great value to the teacher in bringing the distant past to life, and in deepening pupil understanding of its historical significance. Using these sorts of illustrations can help...

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  • Prehistoric Scotland

    Article

    Prehistory is an attempt to reconstruct the story of human societies inhabiting a given region before the full historical record opens there. Its data, furnished by archaeology, are the constructions members of such societies erected and the durable objects they made. The events which should form its subject matter naturally...

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  • Celtic Britain: the land the Romans conquered

    Article

    Please note: this lesson was produced as part of the Nuffield Primary History project (1991-2009) and pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. It is part of a full sequence of lessons available here. Literacy was addressed throughout these lessons: introducing the text and the materials about the island, then working on the production...

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  • Prehistoric Bristol

    Article

    This period is represented in the valley of the Bristol Avon by the Acheulian industries, named from the type station of St. Acheul in the Somme valley, which has yielded many ovate and pear-shaped hand-axes characteristic of the period. These industries flourished during the very long Second Interglacial phase, a...

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  • Case Study: Prehistory in the primary curriculum: A stonehenge to remember

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. An article in the Sunday Times newspaper on 7 December reported that Britain is to stop making nominations to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) for heritage sites to be granted World Heritage...

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  • Primary History 51

    Article

    04 Editorial 06 In my view: Bringing the past to life – Julian Richards (Read article) 07 In my view: The true end of archaeology? – Don Henson (Read article) 08 in my view: Our heritage: use it or lose it – Mike Corbishley (Read article) 10 Think Bubble: Instant Archaeology –...

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  • Case Study: Engaging history with National Trust tracker packs

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. White Horse Hill in Oxfordshire is home to the famous chalk White Horse, and it has been for the last 3000 years. The history surrounding this hill, high up on the Berkshire Downs, goes back...

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  • Case Study: Working with gifted and talented children at an Iron Age hill fort in north Somerset

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. The phone call was over - manna from heaven. The opportunity to work with a ‘real' archaeologist on a ‘real' Iron Age site seemed far too good to be true. The cluster of eight South...

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  • Children's thinking in archaeology

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Young children enjoy prehistory Tactile, Physical and Enactive engagement with archaeological remains stimulates, excites and promotes children's logical, imaginative, creative and deductive thinking. Through archaeology there are infinite opportunities for ‘reasonable guesses' about sources and...

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