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Case Study: Engaging history with National Trust tracker packs
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
White Horse Hill in Oxfordshire is home to the famous chalk White Horse, and it has been for the last 3000 years. The history surrounding this hill, high up on the Berkshire Downs, goes back...
Case Study: Engaging history with National Trust tracker packs
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Archaeology: A view from the classroom
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references are outdated.
Perhaps it is the earthiness of the ground beneath our feet which arouses pupils' curiosity. Or maybe, the idea of the unexpected with the hope of finding something precious or unusual, that is so engaging about archaeology....
Archaeology: A view from the classroom
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Children's thinking in archaeology
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Young children enjoy prehistory Tactile, Physical and Enactive engagement with archaeological remains stimulates, excites and promotes children's logical, imaginative, creative and deductive thinking. Through archaeology there are infinite opportunities for ‘reasonable guesses' about sources and...
Children's thinking in archaeology
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The Leeds Community History Project
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The Nuffield Foundation-funded Leeds Community History Project brought together schools and older community members in the creation of community archives. It focused on articulating, valuing and recording the older generation's memories and knowledge. Its overarching...
The Leeds Community History Project
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Primary history and the curriculum: a South African perspective
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The issues surrounding the construction of a post-conflict history curriculum are complex. At its most basic level, the memory choice for a country emerging from mass violence is between remembering and forgetting, with...
Primary history and the curriculum: a South African perspective
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History...about lives and living
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Let me start with a personal experience and then move on to a classroom example.
I went to Paris for a few days recently and sat in the bar where Hemingway used to drink with...
History...about lives and living
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Case Study: Pictorial Recording
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The innovative use of visual images as communication mode and stimulus to writing is provided by Jan, a teacher on one of the Nuffield courses. Children, and adults, have trouble in making effective...
Case Study: Pictorial Recording
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A Beginner's Guide to using visual image in primary schools
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The employment of the visual image is a fascinating and exciting way to enable children to gain a glimpse into the past. It is problematic, however, in that such imagery is often an...
A Beginner's Guide to using visual image in primary schools
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Think Bubble 49: Frozen moments
Primary History article
Whenever I look at an old sepia photograph or one of those amazing 19th century genre pictures like William Powell Frith's Ramsgate Sands, it is not the immediate images that grab my attention. Although the detail is often remarkable, in the case of Ramsgate Sands the attentive mother gently introducing...
Think Bubble 49: Frozen moments
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In my view: Using Pictures
Primary History article
Children grow up surrounded by pictures - moving pictures on the TV, still advertisements on hoardings, pictures in newspapers and magazines and comic books. ‘The media' are ever present, and so we assume that our children are visually literate - wise eyed. When we see them flicking through books ‘looking...
In my view: Using Pictures
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Unpicking the learning potential in creative approaches to studying World War II
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
‘The biggest issue for school history is its limited place in the curriculum.' (Ofsted, 2007)
This central concern of Ofsted's 2007 report, History in the balance, could equally apply to the teaching of drama in primary schools....
Unpicking the learning potential in creative approaches to studying World War II
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Drama and history: a theory for learning
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
When I visit primary schools these days it heartens me to see how often drama is used in classroom teaching. Looking back over my own career, drama and role play have always been...
Drama and history: a theory for learning
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Thinking through history: assessment and learning for the gifted young historian
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Historical enquiry requires reasoning. Even historical imagination depends on being able to evaluate a number of possible responses to an hypothesis and mastery of detail and argument. The high levels of thinking in history of...
Thinking through history: assessment and learning for the gifted young historian
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Getting Started: The identification of gifted historians
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The complexity of identification Crucial to personalised learning, entitlement and opportunity for equality is the identification of outstanding gifts and talents in children. The quest to identify gifted young historians is challenging as these pupils...
Getting Started: The identification of gifted historians
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History, citizenship and controversy
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Y4 question their MP about nuclear waste policy; Y6 survey people in their community and school about a proposed casino in their town, and feed back the information to the local council; children decide to...
History, citizenship and controversy
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'I could change the world if I put my mind to it!' Teaching Controversial Issues and Citizenship Through a Project on heroes and heroines
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rye Oak School is in its second year of ‘Fresh Start’ status and there are many issues in the school, including poorly motivated children and behavioural problems. Many of the children in the school were...
'I could change the world if I put my mind to it!' Teaching Controversial Issues and Citizenship Through a Project on heroes and heroines
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Teaching about racism, fairness and justice through key people
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Our school has no uniform. You can’t predict what most children or teachers will wear from one day to the next. So the children were rather surprised one day in July 1996 when most of...
Teaching about racism, fairness and justice through key people
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Thinking through history: Story and developing children's minds
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references are outdated.
Story is the crucial factor in children’s awareness of past times in their ‘mythic’ phase of mental development, see page 4. Everyone loves a story, stories ‘open out fresh fields, the illimitable beckoning of horizons to imagination…...
Thinking through history: Story and developing children's minds
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Teaching Famous People at Key Stage One
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Studying famous people at Key Stage One has obviously been an issue for many years and no matter how long you have been teaching the name Florence Nightingale seems to appear as the only famous...
Teaching Famous People at Key Stage One
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History in the Early Years: Bringing the Romans to life
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references are outdated.
Children arrive at school or nursery with their personal, unique mental ‘models’ of the world. the challenge for us is to expand these so that increasingly the pupils will be able rationally to make sense of the...
History in the Early Years: Bringing the Romans to life
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A classroom museum
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Museums are memory boxes. They contain artefacts that tell stories about people in the past. The creation of a class museum is a simple and effective way of bringing the past to life through investigation,...
A classroom museum
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Writing Family Story, Writing History
Primary History article
Why did I research my family history and write a memoir based on my ancestors’ and my own life? And why is all this relevant to readers of the Primary History Journal and not just self indulgent musing? Because it is an insider’s story of trying to write honest history...
Writing Family Story, Writing History
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Putting the Story back into History
Primary History article
Children love stories. They like the drama, the excitement, the chance to listen and to wonder. Narrative is a very important part of history and sometimes, by concentrating on facts or on skills, we tend to lose the view of the big picture, especially in the Key Stage 2 curriculum...
Putting the Story back into History
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How should we remember Rosa Parks?
Primary History Article
Rosa Parks died in October 2005, aged 92. It's a life story which resonates with any age group. In a recent visit to a nursery, I saw 4 year olds who had lined up the chairs to make a bus, playing out Rosa's refusal to move from her seat. She...
How should we remember Rosa Parks?
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Working with Historical Picture Books
Primary History article
For the majority of children a picture book is the first book that they enjoy and share with an adult. Picture books introduce children to different genres of writing, different themes and different artistic styles. As young children 'read' and explore picture books they take meaning from the text and...
Working with Historical Picture Books
