Please note: this article was written before the the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may now be outdated.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 more in-depth engagement with longer text extracts.

Robert recommends the use of old history textbooks to make pupils think about features of some historical writing. Can pupils spot the conventions at work that make such accounts sound naive to the more modern ear? This direct work on interpretations and their construction can be an effective ‘way in’ to more traditional work on source evaluation...