Equestrian comrades and an octopus of mud

Curious about the absence of the physical environment in her school’s schemes of work, and fascinated by the changing relationships between humans and landscapes in the past, history teacher and PhD researcher Verity Morgan decided to design new lessons that brought environmental history into her classroom. Rather than ‘bolting on’ new enquiries or creating lengthy schemes of work, however, Morgan decided to build environmental history into commonly taught historical topics, such as the Black Death, the British Empire and World War I. In this article, Morgan shares her new approach and her lesson resources, in which she attempts to rebalance the stories she tells in the classroom by placing the relationships between humans and nature, and not just the humans, centre stage...