Using Sources

It is important to use a wide range of sources such as pictures, artefacts, music and sights. Children will use these to build up their enquiry thought and processes and to build up their understanding of past.

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  • Local railway history: using visual resources

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Before the 1960s British Rail's spider-web network of railway lines reached every town and thousands of villages. Where you live would have been within a thirty minute journey from a station; scroll down to look at...

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  • Making the children work for the information!

    Article

    Your local museum is often a rich but sometimes overlooked resource. Images, documents and maps show a broad range of history but one that also relates to the children’s own local area. This allows children to see the connection with their own past, providing them with examples that they can...

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  • Museums, schools and creativity: How learning can be enhanced

    Article

    What do we mean by creativity?In the last few years there has been an emphasis on the ‘creative curriculum', ‘creativity' and ‘creative teaching and learning', but there has not always been a shared understanding of what this means. This article uses the definition from ‘Creativity - find it, promote it'...

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  • OFSTED, primary history and creativity

    Article

    Co-ordinators concerns: OFSTED, primary history and creativity I'm told the emphasis in schools now is for a rigorous approach to history where the children are taught the main facts and features of history. I recall a time not so long ago when the whole curriculum was about creativity but surely...

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  • Oral history - a source of evidence for the primary classroom

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. To help children develop a more rounded awareness of historical understanding, they should have the opportunity to examine different types of evidence. The National Curriculum states that, "children should recognise that the past is represented and interpreted...

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  • Place-names and the National Curriculum for History

    Article

    Place-names, such as house or school names, are infinite in number and all around us. Every place-name may convey a message about the place. Often place-names record and celebrate local and national people, events and incidents, define what a place looked like in the past and how we used to...

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  • Poetic writing

    Article

    Poetry is a major area for pupils creative and imaginative historical writing. Pupils writing historical poetry can draw upon a wide range of poetic modes, for example haikus, sonnets, blank verse. Poetry is an excellent vehicle for public presentation, with pupils reading their composition to their class members. To use...

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  • Popular history: Using the media

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Should we use the media to teach history? Many people who were ‘turned off' history at school have been brought back to it in later life by visits to historic places and especially by television programmes....

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  • Pride in place: What does historical geographical and social understanding look like?

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. ‘Some primary schools are like the High Street in many of our towns. I can predict what I will see before I go through the door. What I want to see is something that gives me...

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  • Primary History summer resource 2021: Using historical sources

    Article

    This year's free summer resource for primary members looks at using historical sources with primary pupils. Introducing children to sources is an important part of understanding the disciplinary nature of history. One of the key ideas we need to get pupils to understand is that history is based on sources, which...

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  • Printed pictures with text: Using cartoons as historical evidence

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Written and printed sources are often multi-modal in nature, i.e. they combine images and text (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001). Indeed, many printed sources in the print age, c. 1500-2000 and nearly all in the digital...

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  • Pull-out Posters: Primary History 75

    Article

    1. How to 'read' a house; 2. What sources can we use to learn about railways?

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  • Pupils as apprentice historians (3)

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. The Spring 2008 issue of this magazine, Visual Literacy, highlighted the excellent practice in using visual historical sources that exists in many primary schoolsWe should strive to preserve and extend this critical use of visuals, whatever...

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  • Questions you have always wanted to ask about... Accessing Archive Sources

    Article

    Mary Mills answers questions about accessing archive sources. Please note: this article dates from 2003 and some of the sources and services referenced may no longer be available.

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  • Questions you have always wanted to ask about... History and written sources

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Pat Hoodless answers questions about history and written sources.

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  • Questions you have always wanted to ask about...Using historical maps in the primary classroom

    Article

    Anna Disney and Peter Hammond answer questions about historical maps.

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  • Questions you have always wanted to ask about...Using photographs as sources of evidence

    Article

    Alan Hodkinson answers questions about using photographs as sources of evidence.

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  • Re-evaluating the role of statues

    Article

    Like them or loathe them, statues are excellent learning resources and the recent events in Bristol and elsewhere should not dissuade us from using them to aid children’s historical knowledge and enquiry skills. In fact, in the current climate, statues need a careful re-evaluation of their role within our towns....

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  • Reading Sources Using Textbreaker

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Pages 8-9 detail how functional literacy's concept of genre resulted in the creation of Textbreaker to empower pupils to ‘read' all historical sources, but especially those previously thought too hard for them to tackle. Below is...

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  • Reading the Past: Written and printed sources

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Introduction Be positive, ambitious and bold Many teachers, when they realise how deep the literary requirements are which history makes on the young learner, will hastily declare that their own class is either too young or...

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