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...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Editorial comment: A History of the World is the most creative, imaginative and dynamic development in primary History Education for thirty years. It ties in perfectly with and supports the government's re-vitalisation of primary education that...

The new (2014) Primary History National Curriculum is finally upon us. The first thing you might notice is that the level descriptions have gone. These were first introduced in 1995 and became the mainstay for assessing pupil progression and attainment in Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 across schools in...

The opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic games celebrated change whilst demonstrating the challenges revolutions have on the world. From green pastures to belching chimneystacks, from post-war Britain to the World Wide Internet and text messaging, the way society interacts is changing at an incomprehensible rate. The same could be...

Personal biographies I often ask groups to collect and record their own personal chronologies. They are asked to bring in evidence to tell the stories of their own lives or of the life of a relative, which they will then weave into a ‘photo book' story. The photo books become...

The ICT revolution A paper register, a pink-lined A4 mark book and a written school log book are surely historical artefacts? The transition from paper to digital technology continues, changing the world of the classroom teacher whose working life like mine, began in the print age when digital-based education was...

Introduction: Research into chronological understanding Chronological understanding is both one of history's most important disciplinary organising concepts (Lee and Shemilt: 2004) required for developing a full understanding of history, and certainly one of the most researched, though often with a broader remit that just historical understanding. It is possible to sympathise...

Diogenes: WHITHER CREATIVITY?! A consideration of the article Creativity and the Primary Curriculum In June 2010 the journal Primary Headship included an article entitled Creativity and the Primary Curriculum which endeavoured to pull together a range of positions as to where the curriculum might be going in the immediate future. These...

Please note: This article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated. Introducing the youngest children to the concept of history can be a challenging prospect for some foundation stage practitioners, particularly if they feel their experience of the subject has been limited or their own memories of...

The Primary National Curriculum pinpoints Early Islamic Civilisation as Baghdad c. AD 900 - yet it was so much more. For approximately a thousand years after AD 700 there was an extraordinary amount of activity that radiated out from Baghdad and along a glittering crescent through North Africa and into...

Diogenes - Waving not drowning: English Heritage's Heritage Explorer [THINK BUBBLE, has burst, r.i.p... Diogenes, a curmudgeonly Ancient Greek cynic, has taken its place. The original Grumpy Old Man Diogenes typically looks back to a mythical golden age] Introduction Unfortunately I'm old enough to remember a time when primary school...

Events which encapsulate family, community, national and global history provide rich opportunities for engaging children. Some of these draw on positive memories associated with past events: the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, how people responded to the first flight to the moon, the Millennium celebrations. Yet it is perhaps gruelling...

Introduction: The teaching potential of film Films about historical events seem like the nearest thing we can give our pupils to a time machine. In commercial film, the physical appearance of the past has often been carefully researched, thus a snippet from Gladiator, for example, can give pupils some idea of...

Whole School Planning Introduction The English National Curriculum identifies the history that we have to teach. Organising it into a format that makes sense to children and teachers creates challenges. The programme of study for history offers flexibility. Schools can construct a learning sequence most appropriate to them. Whole school...

Three things are important 1.Don't fall for the hype You are not a bad teacher if you are not using a lot of technology in history or any other area! Research evidence does not support many of the claims made about technology." Most of the evidence we have is anecdotal...

A debt of honour... During the months of September to November 2015, assemblies in my school will focus on remembrance relating to the First World War culminating in a special Armistice Day assembly. In conjunction with this focus a possible approach could be to introduce the children to the growth...

For this issue I have selected an eclectic range of anniversaries. Some are to do with travel and exploration, showing the human spirit of endeavour and wanting to find out more, like Christopher Columbus' epic voyage across the Atlantic, even if, as we now know, the Vikings went before him...

Over the next three editions of Primary History our assemblies pages will be linked to the theme of commemorating the First World War. We have found that while many teachers wish to remember these events in school, they are unsure how to approach the subject with primary aged children. It...

Here are a few suggestions for assemblies over the next few months (March-June); each idea is linked to a specific historical event from that month...

As part of our First World War centenary-themed assemblies, in the last issue of Primary History we focused on the importance of the local dimension. Here we have chosen to look at the role of the international community in the First World War. This approach reflects and celebrates our multi-cultural...