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Children's thinking in archaeology
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Young children enjoy prehistory Tactile, Physical and Enactive engagement with archaeological remains stimulates, excites and promotes children's logical, imaginative, creative and deductive thinking. Through archaeology there are infinite opportunities for ‘reasonable guesses' about sources and...
Children's thinking in archaeology
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School children work as archaeologists
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Adults find local history fascinating: the minutiae of life in the past and the way a familiar place has become what it is today capture our imagination. But children may be rather less eager to...
School children work as archaeologists
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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Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.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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Our heritage: use it or lose it
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
Mrs Markham's influential textbook, ‘A History of England', was first published in 1819 but was still being printed at the end of the nineteenth century. At the end of each chapter is a ‘Conversation'...
Our heritage: use it or lose it
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Means and Ends: History, Drama and Education for Life
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
John Fines, Raymond Verrier and I frequently taught as a team trying to discover where drama work and history meet. We were interested in helping children get a grasp of past events which have influenced their...
Means and Ends: History, Drama and Education for Life
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The creative history curriculum
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
Do you give in to bullying, stay loyal to your leader, admit your actions, betray your neighbours, challenge discrimination or just keep quiet? These were the issues faced by Year 4 children at East...
The creative history curriculum
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The Leeds Community History Project
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The Nuffield Foundation-funded Leeds Community History Project brought together schools and older community members in the creation of community archives. It focused on articulating, valuing and recording the older generation's memories and knowledge. Its overarching...
The Leeds Community History Project
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Primary history through the secondary school lens
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
Trying to explain what pupils at primary school should know and understand about history to help their progress at secondary school is an extremely tricky question to answer (so thanks Jon!). Ultimately there are...
Primary history through the secondary school lens
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Primary History 46: Editorial: History, Citizenship and the Curriculum - A Fit Purpose
Primary History article
Read Primary History 46
In AD 62 an earthquake devastated the town of Pompeii. In AD 1976 Jim Callaghan in his Ruskin speech set off a seismic shock that shook education to its foundations. Almost two decades after the 62 AD Pompeii earthquake’s warning signs the volcanic explosion of Vesuvius...
Primary History 46: Editorial: History, Citizenship and the Curriculum - A Fit Purpose
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History and the early years: A view from the classroom
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History gives colour and vitality to the curriculum. There are just so many engaging things to do. Without history there wouldn't be so much fun; whether in handling objects such as: the old wooden toys,...
History and the early years: A view from the classroom
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Primary history and the curriculum: a South African perspective
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The issues surrounding the construction of a post-conflict history curriculum are complex. At its most basic level, the memory choice for a country emerging from mass violence is between remembering and forgetting, with...
Primary history and the curriculum: a South African perspective
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Dealing with the dead: Identity and community - Monuments, memorials and local history
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Death is one of the most sensitive and controversial issues that teachers encounter, linked inextricably as it is to identity. I think it sometimes escapes our attention that, as teachers of history, we constantly deal...
Dealing with the dead: Identity and community - Monuments, memorials and local history
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History, values education & PSHE
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated.
The core values which are supposed to underpin the curriculum are generally taught through discrete personal, social and health education lessons and developed through classroom ethos. Yet history has at its heart the ways...
History, values education & PSHE
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History...about lives and living
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Let me start with a personal experience and then move on to a classroom example.
I went to Paris for a few days recently and sat in the bar where Hemingway used to drink with...
History...about lives and living
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Thinking through history: Story and developing children's minds
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references are outdated.
Story is the crucial factor in children’s awareness of past times in their ‘mythic’ phase of mental development, see page 4. Everyone loves a story, stories ‘open out fresh fields, the illimitable beckoning of horizons to imagination…...
Thinking through history: Story and developing children's minds
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Teaching Famous People at Key Stage One
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Studying famous people at Key Stage One has obviously been an issue for many years and no matter how long you have been teaching the name Florence Nightingale seems to appear as the only famous...
Teaching Famous People at Key Stage One
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Music in the History Curriculum
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references are outdated.
In a primary school in Devon, there is a teacher who sings to his class every day: traditional songs; love songs; lyrical ballads; sea shanties; tales of mystery and suspense; songs of ritual and ceremony, hunting songs,...
Music in the History Curriculum
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20 Years On, The 1986 Domesday Project
Primary History article
The mention of 'The Domesday Project' to any teacher who was in the classroom in 1985 usually triggers a very vivid memory of involvement in a national survey to capture life at that time. Teachers of over one million pupils in both primary and secondary schools volunteered to be included...
20 Years On, The 1986 Domesday Project
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Creating Stories For Teaching Primary History
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references are outdated.
With primary history contributing to writing, some research by Sandra Dunsmuir and Peter Blatchford into pupils aged 4-7 has relevance to history teaching. The findings were published in the "British Journal of Educational Psychology", edition...
Creating Stories For Teaching Primary History
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Teaching with Meaning: Supporting Historical Understanding in the Primary Classroom
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In essence, history is a record of human affairs. The problem in making this record is that events are past and gone and have to be reconstructed. Evidence may be uncertain and incomplete. Inevitably, several...
Teaching with Meaning: Supporting Historical Understanding in the Primary Classroom
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Using museums and artefacts
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Over several years of reporting on primary history, the use of museums and artefacts has been identified in Ofsted reports as an issue for schools to address. Although there is now far greater expertise in...
Using museums and artefacts
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Ways of making Key Stage 2 history culturally inclusive: A study of practice developed in Kirklees
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Kirklees, West Yorkshire comprises Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Batley. There is a population of 300,000. Minority, ethnic pupils account for nearly 20%. Over the next decade it is predicted that there will be an increase in the number of pupils of Pakistani, Indian,...
Ways of making Key Stage 2 history culturally inclusive: A study of practice developed in Kirklees
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The Dramas of History
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The Mantle of the Expert [MoE] dramatic system works quite simply whereby classes are first of all invited to imagine. Within this imagined world - the class view their world through the eyes of other people...
The Dramas of History
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Using feature films as a means of enhancing history teaching in the primary school
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Although I have always been fascinated by history and almost took it as my major subject at university, I have to admit that the bulk of my ‘knowledge' about historical people and events was shaped...
Using feature films as a means of enhancing history teaching in the primary school
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What are the reasons for linking art and history?
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
Visual images, paintings, sculpture, photographs, cartoons from past times are important historical sources. Accordingly, Simon Schama embeds visual images and imagery in his historical oeuvre, not primarily as illustration but as a crucial...
What are the reasons for linking art and history?
