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Lesson Planning Recipe
Primary History article
Learning objectives
What questions should the children be able to answer at the end of your teaching of the topic? Pare this down to 6 key questions, one for each lesson of a 6-week term. What sub-questions will the lesson address and open up for the next step in the...
Lesson Planning Recipe
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What history should we teach? The HA Primary Survey
Primary History article
The government's 2010 White Paper makes clear that the history curriculum will be reviewed. This is the ideal time to consider that very contentious issue - What History Should We Teach? And who better to ask than those who really know and understand what the curriculum will look and feel...
What history should we teach? The HA Primary Survey
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History in the early years
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Early years history should provide opportunities to expand the children's knowledge and understanding of events, people and changes in the past and develop children's investigative and interpretive skills. Children should focus on:
Questioning
Observation
Generating thoughts...
History in the early years
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Integration and cross-curricularity: History, Humanities And Social Studies
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
From the late 1960s until 1989 history was almost universally taught in primary schools as an element in integrated crosscurricular programmes, normally social studies or humanities.
The 1989/1990 National Curriculum: History radically changed this. It introduced...
Integration and cross-curricularity: History, Humanities And Social Studies
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Pupils as apprentice historians (4)
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The Historical Association [HA] supports effective, stimulating and rewarding history teaching through its website, publications and in-service programme, particularly Primary History and its HITT [History in Initial Teacher Training Programme]. HITT provides extensive guidance on a...
Pupils as apprentice historians (4)
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Pupils as apprentice historians (2)
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
"Without knowing how the history we receive was arrived at, we can only take it as a series of mysterious assertions, which can only be learned in the sense of learning off by heart. Rote-learned history...
Pupils as apprentice historians (2)
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The History around us: Local history
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History is an important aspect of the development of even very young children. They need to begin to develop the foundations of an understanding of the past and how it has developed and affected our present....
The History around us: Local history
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Popular history: Using the media
Primary History article
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....
Popular history: Using the media
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Dimensions Of Britishness: Cultural Diversity and Ethnicity
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Teaching history is a balancing act between generalities and the particular. This article seeks to explore how Britishness and ethnic diversity relate to a broader understanding of diversity. We do not challenge the teaching of topics...
Dimensions Of Britishness: Cultural Diversity and Ethnicity
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From Kings To Queens to Sources and Evidence
Primary History article
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...
From Kings To Queens to Sources and Evidence
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) in primary history – take CARE!
Primary History article
Teaching has embraced many revolutionary changes before: the photocopier, the calculator, the internet, even the smartboard! The Assistant Director-General of UNESCO (2023) though feels that these could pale into insignificance when compared to the rise of AI. This article looks at ways in which Generative AI might be used by...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in primary history – take CARE!
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Learning to engage with documents through role play
Primary History article
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...
Learning to engage with documents through role play
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Why did you write it like a story rather than just saying the information?
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Six-year-old Rebecca asked me this question when I visited her classroom to share a book which I had written with her and her classmates. It seemed to me at the time that Rebecca was identifying a...
Why did you write it like a story rather than just saying the information?
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Printed pictures with text: Using cartoons as historical evidence
Primary History article
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...
Printed pictures with text: Using cartoons as historical evidence
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Student teacher experiences at the Historical Association Conference 2025
Primary History article
Three student teachers from Liverpool John Moores University had the chance to attend the recent Historical Association Conference held at the Hilton in Liverpool. In this article, they outline the sessions and the benefits of attending, focusing on the sessions that they found most useful. The next conference is being...
Student teacher experiences at the Historical Association Conference 2025
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She sells seashells by the seashore: teaching Mary Anning at Key Stage 1
Primary History article
Mary Anning was a fascinating individual who would be a purposeful addition to a history curriculum. This article outlines the rationale behind including her as a significant individual but also offers ideas for developing young children’s understanding of historical interpretations.
She sells seashells by the seashore: teaching Mary Anning at Key Stage 1
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Working effectively with your local history societies: the benefits and challenges
Primary History article
Local history provides rich opportunities to engage children in their immediate local area and understand their own history and how history contributes to a greater overall understanding and bigger picture. In this article, Nick Harman shares his school’s experience of participating in an exciting joint project with the local heritage...
Working effectively with your local history societies: the benefits and challenges
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Who were the Greeks and how diverse was their society?
Primary History article
Susie Townsend explores ancient Greece through the use of maps in this innovative and interesting article. The focus here is on diversity within ancient Greek civilisations and the article includes some activities to support learning. There is something for everyone to take from this piece.
Who were the Greeks and how diverse was their society?
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Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville
Historian article
Justice in the early modern period was discretionary, which meant it could be both violent and deeply unfair. Elites often escaped the most severe punishments inflicted on the poor and minoritised groups. Clare Burgess shows how a Jesuit chaplain in sixteenth- century Seville used his spiritual discretion and zealous belief...
Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville
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James Macpherson: a Scottish Robin Hood
Historian article
James Macpherson led a notorious gang of robbers in late seventeenth-century Scotland, and he became infamous for robbing rich lairds to give to the poor. Anne-Marie Kilday explains how his notoriety is also significant for revealing how people in early modern Scotland could hold complex attitudes towards the Gypsy Roma...
James Macpherson: a Scottish Robin Hood
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Finding Bad Bridget: the lives and crimes of Irish immigrant women in America
Historian article
From the early nineteenth century until the First World War, millions of Irish women emigrated to North America in search of better lives. Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, co-leads for the AHRC-funded Bad Bridget research project, tell us how poverty, discrimination, isolation from family as well as greed and opportunism...
Finding Bad Bridget: the lives and crimes of Irish immigrant women in America
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Out and About: Locating the Local Lockup
Historian feature
If you are arrested for a crime today, you will very likely be taken to a police station and locked in a cell while officers decide if they have enough evidence to charge you. But have you ever wondered what happened to criminals and other disorderly folk – roughs, drunks...
Out and About: Locating the Local Lockup
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Decoding medieval pilgrimage
Historian article
Pilgrimage played a significant role in medieval life and belief. Pilgrims travelled far and wide to express their devotion to saints and their cults. Who were the pilgrims and what did pilgrimage involve? Luke Daly makes sense of this fascinating and complex phenomenon...
Decoding medieval pilgrimage
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Real Lives: A German captain’s perspective on the end of WWI
Historian feature
Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected sto greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...
Real Lives: A German captain’s perspective on the end of WWI
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The Historian 166: Crime and Punishment
The magazine of the Historical Association
This edition of The Historian is free to access for all HA members. Find out about membership here.
Contents
5 Editorial (Read article)
6 Coroners, communities, and the Crown: mapping death and justice in late medieval England – Stephanie Emma Brown (Read article - open access)
11 Mercurial justice: a...
The Historian 166: Crime and Punishment
