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Smooth transitions: Key Stage 2 to 3
Primary History article
Transitions. Pivotal points in a child’s life and a phase in the educational journey that should be celebrated. How do we ensure that transitions are efficiently prepared for, when an ever increasing list of school pressures means that transitions can feel like the poor relation in the list of priorities?...
Smooth transitions: Key Stage 2 to 3
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Historical fiction: it’s all made up, isn’t it?
Primary History article
One of the hardest things for children to develop in history is a sense of period. What was it really like to live in a Stone Age house for example, to get up every morning knowing if you didn’t collect food or hunt something then there would be nothing to...
Historical fiction: it’s all made up, isn’t it?
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How significant is the tragic story of the SS Mendi?
Primary History article
Historical anniversaries and events are often in the news, commemorated locally and nationally. I have found that getting the children involved in topics relating to these can really help them feel the importance of their learning, help them to appreciate the past and feel a sense of responsibility – a...
How significant is the tragic story of the SS Mendi?
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Strange goings-on: exploring the benefits of learning history through outdoor pedagogy
Primary History article
Learning history outside the classroom has tremendous benefits. This article looks at one such example where children can get an immersive, residential historical experience. This not only provides a memorable learning experience, but the combination of an evocative setting, together with carefully crafted activities taught using an outdoor pedagogy, allows...
Strange goings-on: exploring the benefits of learning history through outdoor pedagogy
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Emerging historians in the outdoors
Primary History article
I love history and I love the outdoors. I often find myself wondering who has walked down the same worn cobbled path, or climbed the same rickety stile. I am intrigued about a toy car I found in the garden, and speculate about who it might have belonged to. I...
Emerging historians in the outdoors
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Using apps in the history curriculum
Primary History article
There are a lot of apps out there on multiple platforms and searching for ‘History’ does not really narrow anything down. Knowing which ones are useful, usable and worth paying for is often a case of trial and error. However, this list will save you trawling through the myriad of...
Using apps in the history curriculum
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Using the back cover image: painted wooden police truncheon
Primary History feature
This painted wooden police truncheon dates from the reign of King William IV (1830–37). It is decorated with a crown and the letters WIVR, standing for King William IV. For some pupils, its function may be obvious, for others it may be mistaken for a rounders or baseball bat, or...
Using the back cover image: painted wooden police truncheon
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TREE-mendous history!
Primary History article
Since the nineteenth century there has been a rich heritage of outdoor learning pedagogy in Europe, and today in Scandinavia the open air culture (frulitsliv) permeates Early Years education. In 1993 Bridgewater College nursery nurses returned from a visit to Denmark enthused by the outdoor educational settings and started their own ‘Forest School'. From 1995 the college...
TREE-mendous history!
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Dora Thewlis: Mill girl activist
Primary History article
Dora Thewlis was born in 1890 in Yorkshire to a family of textile workers employed in the mills around the Huddersfield Canal. She followed her mother and elder siblings into the mill at the age of 10, earning around £1 a week.
Dora’s family, and especially her mother, were very...
Dora Thewlis: Mill girl activist
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Women in parliament since 1918
Primary History article
At the 1918 election just one woman, Constance Markievicz, won a seat, in Dublin, for Sinn Fein. She was in prison at the time. At the time, of course, the whole of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. All 73 Sinn Fein MPs refused to take up their seats, and...
Women in parliament since 1918
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Why stop at the Tudors?
Primary History article
When deciding to teach the topic of Benin to my Year 5 pupils I was somewhat daunted by the fact that I had never taught it before, and I was determined that it be a meaningful experience which benefited their narrative, chronological and historical skills-based understanding of the subject. I was...
Why stop at the Tudors?
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Using the back cover image: Moustache cup
Primary History feature
The moustache cup I purchased on ebay is one of the most popular artefacts I use with students in a good game of ‘guess the object’. It has a wonderful quality of being at the same time familiar yet strange. Despite telling the students not to start with the question...
Using the back cover image: Moustache cup
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‘So why did they go into hiding?’ Anne Frank in her historical and social context
Primary History article
All too often Anne Frank becomes a symbol, used to show ‘the triumph of hope over evil’, even though she was killed during the Holocaust. Sometimes she is quoted utterly out of context to provide uplifting sentiments, or short phrases with redemptive messages.
What this lesson sets out to do...
‘So why did they go into hiding?’ Anne Frank in her historical and social context
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Ideas for Assemblies: Refugee stories
Primary History feature
Please note: this piece was written before Sir Mo Farah’s 2022 disclosure that he was trafficked to the UK as a child, so some of its content is no longer accurate.
An assembly could focus on the achievements of their lives, experiences as child refugees and migrants, and how they overcame...
Ideas for Assemblies: Refugee stories
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‘Not again!’ - an additional viewpoint on using railways
Primary History article
‘Not again!’ I can remember my son muttering as his football thudded against the kitchen wall, ‘I went there in Year 2 and then in Year 4 and now I have to go there again in Year 6.’ He was referring to his school trips to the remains of the gunpowder factories in our village,...
‘Not again!’ - an additional viewpoint on using railways
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Overground, underground and across the sea
Primary History article
Communication is at the heart of what it is to be human, and the British postal service has helped to shape the modern world as we know it today. From cryptic Victorian Valentine cards to a lion encountered on Salisbury Plain, there is nothing ordinary about the story of the post! The British postal service...
Overground, underground and across the sea
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The gall nuts and lapis trail
Primary History article
We are used to images of monks copying out texts in a very ornate manner. Books such as the Lindisfarne Gospels still absolutely amaze us with their colour, style and appearance. It must have taken hours and hours to copy out a text like that.
But how was it done? And how did the monks make the inks they...
The gall nuts and lapis trail
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Using the back cover image: Mummified cat
Primary History feature
For hundreds of years, travellers to Egypt have marvelled at the amazing monuments evident throughout the country. The treasures of Ancient Egypt became more fascinating after the discovery of the Rosetta stone in 1799, which led to the deciphering of the hieroglyphic language. Many Victorian explorers returned to their European...
Using the back cover image: Mummified cat
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Poverty in Britain: A development study for Key Stage 2
Primary History article
One of the requirements for Key Stage 2 history is for some history that extends beyond 1066. Various suggestions have been made including an examination of change within a social theme. The example given is Crime and Punishment but the opportunities for something interesting are vast. This article focuses on...
Poverty in Britain: A development study for Key Stage 2
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War memorials as a local history resource
Primary History article
War Memorials Trust (WMT) is the charity that works for the protection and conservation of war memorials in the UK. It defines a war memorial as ‘any physical object created, erected or installed to commemorate those involved in or affected by a conflict or war' (WMT 2009, ‘Definition of a...
War memorials as a local history resource
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Using the back cover image: Oxford Street in the 1960s
Primary History feature
Photographs are very useful and productive documents when teaching history. They provide a snapshot of the past such as this one from just outside Selfridges on Oxford Street in London c.1962-64. Combined with further images from Heritage Explorer, clips from Pathé News, extracts from the 1911 Census, locally gathered images...
Using the back cover image: Oxford Street in the 1960s
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Whole-school planning for progression
Primary History article
The challenge for subject leaders and school leadership teams continues to be managing the tension between what history has to offer your vision for learning and your children's entitlement to a high-quality history education. The new national curriculum has ensured that this year you have had a close look at...
Whole-school planning for progression
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Progression from EYFS to Key Stage 3
Guide
The removal of National Curriculum levels has left many schools and teachers scratching their heads and wondering how to proceed. National Curriculum levels have been used and misused in the past to both define progress in the subject and as a basis for assessment.
In this pamphlet, Jamie Byrom takes us...
Progression from EYFS to Key Stage 3
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Ancient Sumer
Primary History article
For many teachers and children alike, Ancient Sumer will be completely new. Although Sumer has always been an option for teaching about Early Civilisations, the fame of Ancient Egypt, as well as being a tried-and-tested topic, has meant that Sumer has perhaps been overlooked. There is little danger of failing...
Ancient Sumer
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Using the back cover image: Sandbach Crosses - an Anglo-Saxon market cross
Primary History feature
This image is a reconstruction, or interpretation, by Peter Dunn, an artist, of what Sandbach Crosses might have looked like in the ninth century. They are one of the few remaining Anglo-Saxon stone crosses in the country. They stand in the market place in Sandbach, Cheshire. You can find a...
Using the back cover image: Sandbach Crosses - an Anglo-Saxon market cross
