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Teaching history through photographs in the internet and digital age
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
Images allow us to step back in time and ask important historical questions such as ‘Were the Victorians just like us?' Growing digitisation and the spread of the internet allow teachers and learners...
Teaching history through photographs in the internet and digital age
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Case Study: Children's questions about historical pictures
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
Pictures are an important source of evidence for children to use to find out about the past. They have an immediate impact and children of all ages and abilities find that they have...
Case Study: Children's questions about historical pictures
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Every picture tells a story: Sage comme une image
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
A crucial issue in using history as a vehicle for learning is the professional development of colleagues with whom you are working. This is an activity I did with students on a PGCE...
Every picture tells a story: Sage comme une image
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Case Study: Investigating a picture in Key Stage 1
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The teacher, Angela, brought from home a large coloured picture: in the middle a photograph of her grandfather in uniform, taken in 1917. The reading of the picture produced a flood of writing...
Case Study: Investigating a picture in Key Stage 1
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Case Study: Pictorial Recording
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The innovative use of visual images as communication mode and stimulus to writing is provided by Jan, a teacher on one of the Nuffield courses. Children, and adults, have trouble in making effective...
Case Study: Pictorial Recording
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A Beginner's Guide to using visual image in primary schools
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The employment of the visual image is a fascinating and exciting way to enable children to gain a glimpse into the past. It is problematic, however, in that such imagery is often an...
A Beginner's Guide to using visual image in primary schools
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Think Bubble 49: Frozen moments
Primary History article
Whenever I look at an old sepia photograph or one of those amazing 19th century genre pictures like William Powell Frith's Ramsgate Sands, it is not the immediate images that grab my attention. Although the detail is often remarkable, in the case of Ramsgate Sands the attentive mother gently introducing...
Think Bubble 49: Frozen moments
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In my view: Using Pictures
Primary History article
Children grow up surrounded by pictures - moving pictures on the TV, still advertisements on hoardings, pictures in newspapers and magazines and comic books. ‘The media' are ever present, and so we assume that our children are visually literate - wise eyed. When we see them flicking through books ‘looking...
In my view: Using Pictures
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History and Illustration: Quentin Blake
Primary History article
When, at your invitation, I bring together the words ‘History' and ‘Illustration', two images spring immediately to mind. One is John Leech's illustrations to The Comic History of England (1847-1848); the other is the drawings that Ronald Searle brought back from being a prisoner of war of the Japanese a hundred...
History and Illustration: Quentin Blake
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Getting Started with Drama: The Roses of Eyam 1665
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
If you are a little nervous of using drama in your history lessons, here is a safe way to start but look out for the many opportunities that arise for developing empathy, personal opinion, understanding of...
Getting Started with Drama: The Roses of Eyam 1665
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Dramatising Boudicca and the Celts
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links are outdated.
The story of Boudicca lends itself equally well to both history and drama. As a key part of work on ‘The Romans', it is an example of how history and drama when used together can contribute to...
Dramatising Boudicca and the Celts
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Drama and history: a theory for learning
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
When I visit primary schools these days it heartens me to see how often drama is used in classroom teaching. Looking back over my own career, drama and role play have always been...
Drama and history: a theory for learning
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Unpicking the learning potential in creative approaches to studying World War II
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
‘The biggest issue for school history is its limited place in the curriculum.' (Ofsted, 2007)
This central concern of Ofsted's 2007 report, History in the balance, could equally apply to the teaching of drama in primary schools....
Unpicking the learning potential in creative approaches to studying World War II
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Thinking about questions to ask a sailor who knew Christopher Columbus
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The drama was an element in teaching a topic on Columbus with a class of 6-7 year old pupils. The Scheme of Work's title was WATER which lasted six weeks. The history element lasted...
Thinking about questions to ask a sailor who knew Christopher Columbus
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Researching History - Time travellers and Role Players
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
‘Ok children, time for history.'
Distant moans from the back of the class. Would I be surprised by this reaction? No, not if the teacher was diligently following the QCA guidelines for teaching history. Yes, if...
Researching History - Time travellers and Role Players
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History through Drama, A Teachers' Guide - Revisited
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
It is now some seventeen years since the publication of our original pamphlet by the Historical Association [HA] as part of the Teaching of History Series (Wilson and Woodhouse, 1990). This article offers a personal review...
History through Drama, A Teachers' Guide - Revisited
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Drama - Choosing an approach
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
There is a range of drama strategies that we use all the time. The important point is to select a strategy with which you feel confident. For example, the collective making of a map by the...
Drama - Choosing an approach
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Working through drama
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Drama puts the fear of God into some teachers. Some, jolly sensible souls, just don't feel dramatic, fear wearing feathered hats and using funny voices; others know, deep in their hearts, that plays always lead to...
Working through drama
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Think Bubble 48: Lighting fires
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
I have a very old photo in my ‘archive' taken in the 1970s of a much-younger me dressed in, what can only be described as, a vague suggestion of 18th Century costume - thread-bare jacket, a...
Think Bubble 48: Lighting fires
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Case Study 1: The Mr Men mystery of the missing cake
Primary History article
[Editorial note: this Case Study was an element in a yearlong Gifted and Talented Intervention Strategy that was the outcome of a NAGTY Developing Expertise Award teacher scholarship. There were seven ‘interventions’: the Mr Men Case Study and Case Study 2 were two of these. Full details of the DEA...
Case Study 1: The Mr Men mystery of the missing cake
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Think Bubble: The passion to know why
Article
I gave half an ear recently to a radio debate on the nature of scientific genius. A number of examples were given of infants doing calculus and toddlers designing suspension bridges, but the most convincing statement came from a panellist who defined the phenomenon as ‘the passion to know’. The...
Think Bubble: The passion to know why
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History Coordinators' Dilemmas: Catering for the Gifted and Talented
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Gifted and talented in history? I can understand it in music and physical education, maybe in numeracy but surely not history? All curriculum areas have now been told that they have to identify such children...
History Coordinators' Dilemmas: Catering for the Gifted and Talented
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Thinking through history: assessment and learning for the gifted young historian
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Historical enquiry requires reasoning. Even historical imagination depends on being able to evaluate a number of possible responses to an hypothesis and mastery of detail and argument. The high levels of thinking in history of...
Thinking through history: assessment and learning for the gifted young historian
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Case study: The body in the bog - Red Christian goes missing
Article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references are outdated.
Bog Body mysteries have played a central, seminal role in History Education in Britain since the 1970s. The investigation of the Tollund Man Mystery was the original, introductory investigation for pupils that the Schools Council [aka Schools]...
Case study: The body in the bog - Red Christian goes missing
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Teaching Styles and Pupil Learning: The Nuffield Primary History Project's Creative, Interactive Pedagogy - The Pupil' Voice
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
This article is a tribute to the 20th century’s most inspirational history teacher, John Fines. He embodied the principles of ‘doing history’ in his teaching and in the Nuffield Primary History Project that he directed....
Teaching Styles and Pupil Learning: The Nuffield Primary History Project's Creative, Interactive Pedagogy - The Pupil' Voice