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Year 7 explore the story of a London street
Teaching History article
One street, twenty children and the experience of a changing town: Year 7 explore the story of a London street
Michael Wood and others have recently drawn attention to the ways in which big stories can be told through local histories. Hughes and De Silva report a teaching unit through...
Year 7 explore the story of a London street
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Progression & Assessment without Levels - Guide
Progression & Assessment
In the 2014 national curriculum for primary and secondary history one of the key differences is that, for the first time since 1991, there are no level descriptions against which you can assess pupils' progress. The new attainment target says simply that:
‘By the end of each key stage, pupils...
Progression & Assessment without Levels - Guide
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Assessment in Primary History - Guidance
Assessment in Primary History
Whilst a number of schools have had well-considered assessment procedures for primary history, these represented a minority. With the new national curriculum, the old level descriptions have been replaced by a single sentence attainment target which states that "by the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know,...
Assessment in Primary History - Guidance
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Iron Age Farm - Film
Iron Age Farm
The following film takes a look at Butser Ancient Farm - a unique experimental archaeological site and a fascinating day out. Nestled into the rolling South Downs National Park, this ancient farm displays ongoing constructions of Iron Age buildings based on real sites, crops from prehistory and rare breeds of...
Iron Age Farm - Film
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Case Study: Constructing women's past and gender perspective
Primary History article
Pupils as Journalists
Background of the Study
Historiography has expanded to include all social groups and identities in the community. The social historiographical approach became extremely important in the 20th century (Cooper, 2007, pp. 41-2). In parallel with social historiography and related second wave feminism, women began to write their...
Case Study: Constructing women's past and gender perspective
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Case Study: The history club
Primary History article
Editorial note: this is an introductory article on the History Club concept: Primary History 64, summer 2013, on History and the new 2014+ National Curriculum for History will provide a vade mecum for schools to develop their own History Clubs.
.... sometimes we use the past and today, modern times,...
Case Study: The history club
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Outline plan using key questions: Vikings example
A Series of Lessons (KS2)
Overall key question: Who were the Vikings?
Lesson 1
Key question: What can a case study tell us about the Vikings?
Content Building on prior knowledge - what the children knew and what they wanted to know.Digging up a burial mound on the Isle of Man, and discovering many aspects...
Outline plan using key questions: Vikings example
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Case Study: Using Archives Creatively
Primary History article
Editorial note: Further details of this project and others can be found in Using Archives Creatively (Chapter 4) in ‘Teaching History Creatively' edited by Hilary Cooper published by Routledge in December 2012.
Archive Centres support innovative teaching
Using archive documentation
Some teachers, especially those with little training in teaching History,...
Case Study: Using Archives Creatively
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Case Study: Creative exploration of local, national and global links 1650
Primary History article
Introduction: Linking two schools
Rather than looking to create connections with schools in distant places, two teachers from two schools located in different parts of the city of Bristol established a successful link which enabled children to appreciate the personal and local histories on each other's doorsteps. 7/8 year old [year...
Case Study: Creative exploration of local, national and global links 1650
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Case study: Creative approaches to learning about the Bristol blitz
Primary History article
The University of the West of England, Bristol has strong partnerships with many local schools and is developing innovative ways in working with trainees, teachers and children. The approach taken to learning about the Bristol Blitz provides an example of this partnership.
The Bristol Blitz day
The day was planned to...
Case study: Creative approaches to learning about the Bristol blitz
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Case Study: Promoting creativity, empathy and historical imagination
Primary History article
Empathy and Imagination
Creativity, imagination and historical empathy are concepts with different meanings although interrelated in the field of historical learning (Lee, 1984; Shemilt, 1984, Ashby & Lee, 1987). According to Lee (1984) concepts such as empathy, understanding and imagination are connected in complex ways in history. Lee discusses the...
Case Study: Promoting creativity, empathy and historical imagination
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Case Study: Creative chronological thinking
Primary History article
Personal biographies
I often ask groups to collect and record their own personal chronologies. They are asked to bring in evidence to tell the stories of their own lives or of the life of a relative, which they will then weave into a ‘photo book' story. The photo books become...
Case Study: Creative chronological thinking
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Thematic or topic based whole school curriculum planning
Primary History article
Creative curricular planning With the National Curriculum under review, it seems that more schools are taking a creative approach to planning by delivering the curriculum through a focused theme or topic. This has allowed schools to take more ownership of the curriculum and has helped teachers become more innovative in their...
Thematic or topic based whole school curriculum planning
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Creativity in teaching and learning at the Geffrye Museum
Article
Learning and education has always been an essential and central part of the Geffrye museum's purpose. Twice winners of the highly prestigious Sandford Award for Heritage Education, most recently in 2012, our professional learning team works with a broad range of audiences to develop and deliver a wide variety of...
Creativity in teaching and learning at the Geffrye Museum
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Geosong: a transition project
Primary History article
How do we engage young people with their Heritage, answer curriculum needs and make that big leap of transition from primary to secondary school that bit easier?
English Heritage's Geosong treasure hunt website went some way to providing answers. What does the website do? Using handheld GPS devices, groups must...
Geosong: a transition project
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Creating the 'creative history' website
Primary History article
Editorial note: The role of ICT in the Digital Age is a major, perhaps even, the major factor, in enhancing creativity in the learning and teaching of history. This paper illuminates another dimension of ICT in the Digital Age and creativity. It shows how a teacher's creativity has produced a...
Creating the 'creative history' website
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OFSTED, primary history and creativity
Primary History article
Co-ordinators concerns: OFSTED, primary history and creativity
I'm told the emphasis in schools now is for a rigorous approach to history where the children are taught the main facts and features of history. I recall a time not so long ago when the whole curriculum was about creativity but surely...
OFSTED, primary history and creativity
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Diogenes: Creativity and the Primary Curriculum
Primary History article
Diogenes: WHITHER CREATIVITY?! A consideration of the article Creativity and the Primary Curriculum
In June 2010 the journal Primary Headship included an article entitled Creativity and the Primary Curriculum which endeavoured to pull together a range of positions as to where the curriculum might be going in the immediate future. These...
Diogenes: Creativity and the Primary Curriculum
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A creative Egyptian project
Primary History article
Ideally when teaching history, teachers will look to deliver projects that will engage and motivate, hopefully making the hard work of being creative stimulating and rewarding, based upon questioning, enquiry, investigation of sources and reaching conclusions grounded in the evidence.Ancient Egypt is one of those history topics which, because it...
A creative Egyptian project
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Questions and questioning exemplar: Roman Britain
Exemplar
Using key questionsThe Romans in Britain was a lesson introducing Roman Britain to a Year 5 class.We started with the key question: 'What was Roman Britain like?' We had prepared group sets of pictures of aspects of Roman Britain. The images showed a range of scenes, e.g. cooking in a...
Questions and questioning exemplar: Roman Britain
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Topic book blitz: asking and answering questions and Tudor Britain
Short Lesson Exemplar
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
The topic book blitz approach, where children freely scan a range of topic books, provides both a marvellous stimulus to curiosity and questioning, and an authentic purpose for using research skills.
One of our key principles is Questions and Questioning.In this...
Topic book blitz: asking and answering questions and Tudor Britain
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Polychronicon 149: Interpreting the Persian Wars
Teaching History feature
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
So begins Robert Graves' poem, The Persian Version. The conceit of the poem is to invert the standard narrative of the Persian war of the early fifth century BC - a narrative drawn from Greek sources such as...
Polychronicon 149: Interpreting the Persian Wars
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ICT and Students with Special Educational Needs
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Turner writing in 1998 acknowledged that there was insufficient research into teaching history to pupils with SEN. He believed that this was one reason why there was little to challenge Wilson's declaration that ‘history as the term is generally understood, cannot...
ICT and Students with Special Educational Needs
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Animation case study: Indus Valley figurines
Primary History case study
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Since the advent of animation software for schools, I wanted to trial an animation project, inspired by the quirky human and animal figurines, model wheeled carts and toys, all of terracotta, from the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilisation which clamour for clay...
Animation case study: Indus Valley figurines
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Case Study: Hit the net!
Primary History case study
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Primary History's editorial team set me the challenge of seeing how useful ICT would be in my teaching. The challenge was timely, as I recently inherited a Year Six History class with its unit of work "Life in Britain since the 1930s"....
Case Study: Hit the net!
