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Using the back cover image: Communications
Primary History feature
Exploring the everyday objects that shaped our lives in the not too distant past can prove to be exciting historical challenges for primary age children. While we might remember or be familiar with the objects and their use, they can provide confusion for children. This is in part because of...
Using the back cover image: Communications
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Storytelling the past
Primary History article
This article will demonstrate how to engage children through storytelling and how it can be used to develop their critical understanding of the past.
Why story?
Despite their common derivation, the words ‘history’ and ‘story’ suggest very different kinds of knowledge, the former carrying overtones of detached understanding of the...
Storytelling the past
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Dissolution of the Monasteries: Haughmond Abbey
Lesson Plan
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
The objectives of this lesson were for the children to:
Understand that spoken language and word usage may change over a period of time;
Understand that to be able to use an historical document as a source of evidence it is...
Dissolution of the Monasteries: Haughmond Abbey
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Assessment and feedback in history
Primary History article
Every year schools need to produce a statutory annual report for parents and carers, setting out ‘brief particulars of achievements in all subjects and activities forming part of the school curriculum’. This should include the strengths and developmental needs of each child. In a subject such as history, how do...
Assessment and feedback in history
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The 2014 History National Curriculum: how to get the best from heritage
Primary History article
We all know that site visits are good for children - not least because they give a break from the normal school routine - and there are a plethora of heritage sites both local and national that are able to offer facilities for school visits. But we also know that...
The 2014 History National Curriculum: how to get the best from heritage
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Towards inclusion: A study of significant figures and disability within the national curriculum
Primary History article
Since the early days of the National Curriculum, considerable progress has been made to introduce children to an inclusive view of history. The research of the late Hilary Claire (1996) served as a major impetus and now primary teachers strive to ensure that no groups or individuals are marginalised, particularly...
Towards inclusion: A study of significant figures and disability within the national curriculum
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Using classic fiction to support the study of childhood in Victorian times
Primary History article
Please note: This article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated.
Classic fiction provides useful sources of information for investigating the lives, beliefs and values of people in the past. In this article Ann Cowling describes activities undertaken with student teachers which may also serve as models...
Using classic fiction to support the study of childhood in Victorian times
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Planning a post-1066 thematic study
HA Primary Subject Leader Area
The requirement in National Curriculum rubric at Key Stage 2 for a study or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066 can appear intimidatingly broad at first sight, but Andrew Wrenn is here to help! Drawing on non-statutory examples provided in the National Curriculum – such as...
Planning a post-1066 thematic study
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How can we use significant anniversaries in our teaching?
Primary History article
Anniversaries enable us to draw out the significance of events and circumstances in the past in a number of ways. They can serve as a focus for assemblies, providing an opportunity to draw out work covered in history lessons or deal with topics which are outside what is covered in...
How can we use significant anniversaries in our teaching?
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Vikings: who were they?
Lesson Plan (KS2)
Please note: this lesson was produced as part of the Nuffield Primary History project (1991-2009) and pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. It is part of a full sequence of lessons available here.
This resource is free to everyone. For access to hundreds of other high-quality resources by primary history experts along with free...
Vikings: who were they?
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Place-names and the National Curriculum for History
Primary History article
Place-names, such as house or school names, are infinite in number and all around us. Every place-name may convey a message about the place. Often place-names record and celebrate local and national people, events and incidents, define what a place looked like in the past and how we used to...
Place-names and the National Curriculum for History
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Case Study: Working with gifted and talented children at an Iron Age hill fort in north Somerset
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The phone call was over - manna from heaven. The opportunity to work with a ‘real' archaeologist on a ‘real' Iron Age site seemed far too good to be true. The cluster of eight South...
Case Study: Working with gifted and talented children at an Iron Age hill fort in north Somerset
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Working with Boudicca texts - contemporary, juvenile and scholarly
Teaching History article
Please note: this article was written before the the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may now be outdated.
Robert Guyver describes a model for teaching Boudicca’s rebellion to pupils aged 7 to 13. Drawing on the tradition of critical source evaluation, he nonetheless shuns aspects of that tradition in favour of...
Working with Boudicca texts - contemporary, juvenile and scholarly
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Teaching pre-history outside the classroom
Primary History article
From a visit to a local museum or heritage site, to using bushcraft skills to give pupils first-hand experience of what it might have been like to live in ancient times, teaching prehistory outside the classroom can really give this area of the curriculum the wow factor. The inclusion of...
Teaching pre-history outside the classroom
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Flight
Lesson Plan
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Download the attached lessons below.
Cross-curricular lessons in History, Science, and Design & Technology:
the story of Icarus and his flight to the Sun (is this possible?),
the story of the Montgolfier brothers and their...
Flight
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Churches as a local historical source
Primary History Article
At Key Stage 1 children should learn about significant events, (e.g. the Great Fire of London) and about people and places in their locality. At Key Stage 2 they should learn about British settlement by Anglo-Saxons and Scots (e.g. Anglo-Saxon art and culture) and do a local history study (e.g....
Churches as a local historical source
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Viking travel
Lesson Plan (KS2)
Please note: this lesson was produced as part of the Nuffield Primary History project (1991-2009) and pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. It is part of a full sequence of lessons available here.
How did the Vikings travel so far?
Using photos to investigate a Viking longboat. (See Gokstad ship for links to photographs.)
Key...
Viking travel
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Making use of outstanding resources in museums
Primary History article
‘An embarrassment of riches' is not an inappropriate description of the new ancient Egyptian galleries in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The Ashmolean has always been famous for its Egyptian collection, being the product of the work of Oxford academics for over a 100 years, but the problem in the...
Making use of outstanding resources in museums
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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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Magdalen Road
Lesson Plan
We focused on changes in one local set of shops (in Magdalen Road) and looked at the impact of the World War II Exeter blitz on the area.
The topic was a local study incorporating history and geography, developing children's historical understanding.
To develop as fully as possible the children's...
Magdalen Road
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Using original sources
Primary History article
Why would I want those old books in my classroom?
It has always been recognised that good primary history is able to connect the past with the world the children currently inhabit. That is why focusing on schools can be so useful. If there is one experience the children have...
Using original sources
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Alan Turing
Article
The man who helped win the war, invented computing and inspired artificial intelligence research
Editorial note: Alan Turing was a major figure in the cracking of the Germans' Enigma code at Bletchley Park which could well have helped shortened World War II by a couple of years. The more general...
Alan Turing
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Using cemeteries as a local history resource
Primary History article
Why visit a cemetery as part of the history curriculum? Local studies now feature prominently in the primary history curriculum for both key stages. This development challenges teachers to find easilyaccessible, inexpensive and relevant resources on their doorstep. A rich resource which has traditionally been overlooked is the local churchyard...
Using cemeteries as a local history resource
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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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Elementary Education in the Nineteenth Century
Classic Pamphlet
All schemes for education involve some consideration of the surrounding society, its existing structure and how it will-and should-develop. Thus the interaction of educational provision and institutions with patterns of employment, social mobility and political behaviour are fascinatingly complex. The spate of valuable local studies emphasizes this complexity and makes...
Elementary Education in the Nineteenth Century
