Local History

What constitutes local history can be a grey area. It includes, the history of your school, the history of the town or village in which you live, and the history of a particular county or region. Local history forms a key element of the history curriculum from Key Stages 1-3 and is a way of making links between the locality and national and international events.  The question for many schools is whether to teach a local history unit discretely or whether to incorporate it into another unit. There are a number of things that the teacher of local history needs to have in their toolkit, especially if you, as the teacher, are not particularly familiar with the local context of the school in which you teach. In this section you will find helpful articles, guides and resources to enable you to make local history meaningful.

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  • Community engagement in local history

    Article

    This article, by Lynda Abbott and Richard Grayson, offers a fascinating example of collaboration between school and university, focused on the development of a community archive. The project - run as an extra-curricular activity - was originally inspired by a concern to preserve the personal stories of those whose lives...

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  • A local history toolkit

    Article

    Produced by the Historical Association for the National Literacy Trust's "The Olden Times" newspaper resource, May 2011. For more recent resources on local history enquiries see: Local significant individuals Local history scheme of work: your local high street Local history scheme of work: transport Incorporating local history into a scheme...

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  • Newspaper Collection

    Article

    Richard Heaton's collection of newspapers consists of over 800 free searchable extracts and full transcripts of English and Irish, Georgian and early Victorian Regional newspapers. It is one the largest free collections on the web full of unique material bringing you one step closer to your ancestors and their world,...

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  • Cunning Plan 134: local history at KS3

    Article

    Question: How can we plan to integrate local history into Key Stage 3 schemes of work so that pupils are engaged by the relevance of the subject across different periods of time? Local history can come in all shapes and sizes, from a large-scale oral history project to the perusal...

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  • Relevant, rigorous and revisited: using local history to make meaning of historical significance

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. The idea of engaging pupils with the relevance of local memorials is becoming commonplace in the history classroom. In Teaching History 109, Examining History  Edition, Dale Banham's pupils used First World War memorials to assess...

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  • 'How our area used to be back then': An oral history project in an east London school

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. How can oral history enquiries engage students with the study of history and help them connect their learning about the past to their present lives? How can oral history engage and develop students' understanding of...

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  • Riots, railways and a Hampshire hill fort: Exploiting local history for rigorous evidential enquiry

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Rigorous historical enquiry is integral to effective history teaching. The 2008 National Curriculum has recognised its importance by giving it a broader definition as a key process to include not only the use of historical...

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  • Teaching History 134: Local Voices

    Article

    02 Editorial 03 HA Secondary News 04 Relevant, rigorous and revisited: using local history to make meaning of historical significance – Geraint Brown and James Woodcock (Read article) 12 Cunning Plan: Local history at KS3 – Dan Moorhouse (Read article) 15 Nutshell 16 Riots, railways and a Hampshire hill fort: exploiting local...

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  • Was the workhouse really so bad? An encounter with a cantekerous tramp

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Have you stuggled to find an invigorating, exciting local enquiry to motivate your Year 9 class ? How do you engage students in lively debate? This was the challenge for one Norfolk school who wanted...

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  • Polychronicon 130: Dental, transcendental, regimental: Making Mangal Pandey

    Article

    Have you stuggled to find an invigorating, exciting local enquiry to motivate your Year 9 class ? How do you engage students in lively debate? This was the challenge for one Norfolk school who wanted to develop a local study on the Poor Law and to create opportunities for students...

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  • Ralph Sadleir: Hackney's Local Hero or Villain: Examples of learning opportunities in museums and historic sites at Key Stage 3

    Article

    The benefits of learning in historical sites and museums are well documented. De Silva, Smith and Tranter wrote in Teaching History 102, Inspiration and Motivation Edition, about exploring identity through the biography of a house, suggesting the possibility of teaching from the local to capture the national picture. However, students...

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  • Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime: using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able

    Article

    The most able can be challenged in a variety of ways and at a number of levels, from the extension question for the individual child to the extended enquiry for the most able class. In a Leading Edge History project, Guy Woolnough and his colleagues took the concept of challenge...

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  • What do we feel we are?

    Article

    I was once told that family history was second only to pornography in the list of most visited websites. I'm not sure of the truth of this but if the popularity of the BBC 2's 'Who do you think you are?' is anything to go by, I wouldn't doubt it....

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  • Have we got the question right? Engaging future citizens in local history enquiry

    Article

    Gary Clemitshaw describes a five-lesson sequence integrating history, citizenship and ICT. He examines the varied rationales and problems underlying a citizenship-history link and then argues for the role of the local dimension in securing a connection that preserves the integrity of the discipline of history. He focuses upon causation as...

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  • Telling and suggesting in the Conwy Valley

    Article

    Thelma Wiltshire applies a ‘telling' and ‘suggesting' strategy to an enquiry involving an historical site. Getting beyond more simplistic approaches to ‘fact' and ‘opinion', she describes how a pack of curriculum materials was designed to give pupils a precise language to talk about layers of certainty and uncertainty in their...

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