Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. The Spring 2008 issue of this magazine, Visual Literacy, highlighted the excellent practice in using visual historical sources that exists in many primary schoolsWe should strive to preserve and extend this critical use of visuals, whatever...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Until the mid 1930s the vast majority of children attended elementary schools, which went through from five to fourteen. In theory pre-war schools were left relatively free to teach in the way they chose as there...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Should we use the media to teach history? Many people who were ‘turned off' history at school have been brought back to it in later life by visits to historic places and especially by television programmes....

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. First let me say that I did not research the materials used or plan this lesson. For this I must acknowledge, with thanks, that this is the work of my colleague, Mike Huggins, and the senior...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Introduction Be positive, ambitious and bold Many teachers, when they realise how deep the literary requirements are which history makes on the young learner, will hastily declare that their own class is either too young or...

Please note: This article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated.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...

Please note: This article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated. Introducing the youngest children to the concept of history can be a challenging prospect for some foundation stage practitioners, particularly if they feel their experience of the subject has been limited or their own memories of...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Written and printed sources are often multi-modal in nature, i.e. they combine images and text (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001). Indeed, many printed sources in the print age, c. 1500-2000 and nearly all in the digital...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Pages 8-9 detail how functional literacy's concept of genre resulted in the creation of Textbreaker to empower pupils to ‘read' all historical sources, but especially those previously thought too hard for them to tackle. Below is...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. In the autumn of 2009 I saw some of the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and stood in awe at the skills of the craftsmen. Reminded so vividly of the...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. A research project was carried out with Maltese primary school children at San Andrea Infant and Middle school to see if learning strategies could accelerate pupils' cognitive development. The research involved a range of historical sources:...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Editorial comment: A History of the World is the most creative, imaginative and dynamic development in primary History Education for thirty years. It ties in perfectly with and supports the government's re-vitalisation of primary education that...

When the Historical Association was approached by Teachers' TV to produce ‘Great Ideas for Teaching History' at Key Stage 2, it was inevitable that I, as a full time teacher on the Primary Committee, would have no escape. My school agreed I could take part, with the involvement of two...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. It is difficult to think of an area of primary history that has had a more transforming effect on the subject than that of artefacts. The idea of giving children a ‘real' experience of the past...

IntroductionI was talking about ‘Doing History' with historical artefacts and objects with a young teacher when she closed the discussion with the statement ‘It's alright for you, you're old, your house is full of old things - how do I get them?' Alas - I had to agree with her,...

In history when we say objects we mean artefacts, that is, things made by people rather than natural objects. They provide archaeological evidence and can have various forms, from something tiny like a button to a huge building or ruins. The most ordinary objects can yield much historical evidence and...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated. Editorial note: This article reveals the power of the Internet in helping us all, adults and children, to bring portraits like Drake's to life. So, as you read, follow the links.

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. This article will argue that although history can seem a ‘hard' discipline for young children, it can be made accessible and exciting through telling stories about objects. The article does not contain advice about obtaining objects:...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Master and Mistress of the Workhouse refused to talk to any of us as she was adamant that nothing she could remember would be very interesting! Of course disappointments like this have to be accepted and...

Editorial note: This article introduces teachers to ss Great Britain as an artefactual teaching resource. It links closely to Teachers TV programmes, see page 30, and should be read in conjunction with them.