Sometimes, pupils complain that there is a sameness to history lessons. History though offers scope for all kinds of exciting and varied activities targeting the key concepts and processes of the National Curriculum. Over the years, the following list has been gathered showing this variety. It could be used as a prompt to teachers if they feel that there are limited approaches to the subject.

Understanding historical situations, events and people:
1. Using the senses - what people heard, felt, smelt rather than just saw;
2. Visualisation;
3. Using pictures to stimulate responses;
4. Freeze frames;
5. Children in the past (easier to relate to) and especially linked to their own history;
6. Children devise questions with hot seating respondees;
7. Getting pupils to represent different people in a story;
8. Biographies, character sketches and obituaries;
9. Choosing a favourite person and discuss what was good or bad about them;
10. Find deliberate mistakes in a story;
11. Precis/summaries of the most important parts of a story or theme;
12. Thinking/mind maps linking events;
13. Outlines of a broad theme;
14. Comparing themes and issues across units;
15. Acting as advisers/spies in a historical situation;
16. Highlighting particular parts of a story or source, e.g. to show a viewpoint or something significant;
17. Imagining being in a particular place, at an event, in a room - describing the scene;
18. Describing scenes to another person;
19. Re-telling stories and accounts;
20. Living history;
21. Defining historical terminology.

Time, Change, Chronology:
22. Sorting into ages - artefacts, local history, stories, e.g. old/new, by period, century, decade, year, month;
23. Producing timelines from a range of sources, choosing type of timeline or time clock with multiple ones as pupil's progress;
24. Using dates, e.g. BCE, AD;
25. Discussing length of time of events, periods etc - duration;
26. What people in the past noticed was different to day and vice versa rather than just spotting similarities and differences;
27. Family trees - personal and for historical families;
28. Describing changes, their nature, speed, extent, importance and reasons;
29. What people in two different historical periods might have found surprising, different etc;
30. How people in the past viewed the changes;
31. Matching features with periods;
32. Changes in a person's life;
33. Justifying why they have chosen something such as a sequence;
34. Sort bits of a story into a sequence;
35. Completing possible ends to a story or filling in the middle or what might have happened before and after;
36. Thinking/mind maps linking events;
37. Making links across time, place and theme;
38. Looking for patterns across historical periods and themes;
39. Finding patterns of change, turning points.

Reasons and Results
40. Dilemmas - "why did they do this even though......?" or "we would not do this today. Why did they do this?"
41. Cause - effect matching;
42. Trying to imagine the choices/options for people - moral decisions, crucial choices, what alternatives were there;
43. Imaging the perspectives of people at the time - i.e. without hindsight, what they understood, knew and felt, how people in the past explained things, what surprised them;
44. Thinking/mind maps or diagrams to show cause, effects and linking events;
45. Likely effects if circumstances had been slightly different (counterfactuals);
46. Simulations and games;
47. Detective work - piecing evidence to find reasons;
48. Mind maps, diagrams showing causes and effects, linking events;
49. Inferring possible effects from causes or vice versa;
50. Sorting into types of cause/effect;
51. Putting causes/effects in order of importance;
52. Role play;
53. Diaries and letters explaining feelings and motives;
54. Why things turned out differently to what was intended;
55. Why something led to a change;
56. The contribution of a particular cause or person to an event.

Interpretations:
57. Detecting differences in historical stories and accounts;
58. Explaining possible reasons for differing viewpoints;
59. Distinguishing between fact and opinion about an event, person or situation;
60. Getting pupils to represent different people in a story;
61. Writing or telling from another perspective;
62. Choosing a favourite person and discuss what was good or bad about them;
63. Selecting objects or information for a display/museum/time capsule with sorting criteria;
64. Précis most important parts of a story or theme;
65. Highlighting particular parts of a story or source, e.g. to show a viewpoint or something significant;
66. Labelling and captions to suit a picture;
67. Acting as an adviser to someone in the past;
68. Persuading others of the wisdom or otherwise of a decision;
69. Discussing the personal view of some event or situation in history;
70. Editing a historical story or account;
71. Choosing images to represent a scene or event;
72. Speech bubbles;
73. Reconstructing a scene using material representing different viewpoints;
74. Producing and comparing summaries about people, events and situations;
75. Comparing different types of history, e.g. pop history, film, serious writing;
76. Inferring details about the authors and producers from sources;
77. Give information about the author and ask pupils to produce an account reflecting their beliefs and circumstances;
78. Discussing which are the best accounts from a historical viewpoint - how convincing;
79. Discuss bias of pupils' work;
80. Discuss what interpretations might have been based on;
81. What needs to alter to give a different impression;
82. Establishing criteria to judge, e.g. heroes, success etc.

Enquiry:
83. Children plan an investigation, e.g. brainstorm the questions to ask;
84. Devising a questionnaire;
85. Using 2 or more sources and asking them to combine information or explain differences;
86. Inferences based on only a part of a source;
87. Dustbin or suitcase game;
88. Class debate about a historical person or situation;
89. Solving a mystery - acting as a detective using bits of evidence to solve the problem, reconstructing a person's lifestyle from a bag of objects;
90. Drawing pictures from a story or source or a picture of an artefact being used, i.e. adapting information such as writing in first person, writing from another standpoint, adapting for a different audience
91. Précis most important parts of a story or theme;
92. Editing accounts;
93. Using sources to produce pupil's own account;
94. Producing an interactive wall display;
95. Imagining the use and life story of an artefact;
96. Posing questions about a source;
97. Discuss reliability - exaggeration, bias, inaccuracy, contradictions;
98. Selecting sources for an investigation;
99. Sorting sources;
100. Discuss why a source may have been produced;
101. Delete words or sentences from sources and ask pupils to work out what might be missing;
102. Discuss everything that can be inferred - for definite, probably, possibly and what we need to know to be sure;
103. Cut up a source. Pupils put it together in the way they think it should;
104. Discussing symbolism;
105. Pupils mime the contents of a source;
106. Collating from different sources a historical scene;
107. Forging a document in a particular style;
108. Discuss reactions to a particular document or source;
109. Ask questions to the author/producer of a source;
110. Making deductions about authors and producers;
111. Reviewing a source or book;
112. Group collaboration of an investigation;
113. Review (self and peer) of class work;
114. Sorting into categories, e.g. similarity/difference; cause/effect; change/continuity; main points/less important;
115. Testing a specific hypothesis;
116. Writing in a range of styles, e.g. fiction, a speech, poems, songs, cartoon, diary, letter, eyewitness, brochure, newspaper, trails, guides, annotated drawings, model, poster, pageant, advertisement, play, game or crossword,;
117. Devising a television or radio or PowerPoint presentation.

Although the list is long, it is not exhaustive. If members have other activities that seem to work effectively, we would be pleased to know so that we can maintain a database of "varied tasks in history teaching" on the HA website.