Smooth transition

This section contains examples of projects and advice on securing continuity and progression across the primary-secondary divide.  This is the responsibility of both primary and secondary school history teachers.  Pupils need to be ready, by the end of Year 6, for history in Year 7, and courses for Year 7 need to build properly on the primary experience. This is extremely challenging because secondary school history teachers have and to take into account (currently very diverse) primary school starting points. 

Parsons in TH98 describes an imaginative project in which Key Stage 2 pupils wrote letters to Key Stage 3 pupils in role as evacuees. The Key Stage 3 pupils had to write back as parents. Wiltshire in TH100 shows her work on getting Year 6 to develop evidential thinking using historic sites. This yielded several Letters in TH101 from secondary school teachers who tried out Wiltshire’s ideas and began to discuss and build on them. An account of a substantial HA project that focused on preparing Year 6 for aspects of disciplinary history can be found in Brown and Wrenn TH121. For articles that examine broader models of progression, from 5 to 18, see the section Progression and Assessment (KS3).

The report, units and schemes of work from our Key Stage 2-3 Transition Project can also be found here.

Click here to access our Transition between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 resources...