This article looks at how children can utilise and manipulate mathematical data to make sense of a historic past. The focus is on helping children see the numbers as a resource for understanding the experiences of those that lived in this place.

Aim: Understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions. The children create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses.

This historical aim from the National Curriculum can feel quite daunting as this requires a lot of work. This example shows how one class of Year 5/6 children approached this through a focus on the local workhouse...