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Time, Chronology, language and story
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Time, although an extremely complex, abstract concept, is one that begins to develop in children's minds as soon as they are born. Although it cannot be seen or touched and leaves no visible trace, very young...
Time, Chronology, language and story
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Constructivist chronology and Horrible Histories
Primary History case study
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
I chose Horrible Histories for this exploration of children's understanding of chronology because I thought it would be fun - and I approve of the Horrible Histories. They use sources, question sources, provide alternative interpretations and...
Constructivist chronology and Horrible Histories
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Scene shifting: Using visuals for chronology
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Vivid pictures from and of the past, its material culture, can be stimulating and effective tools for teaching chronology.
Their use is not, however, straightforward. Children bring into school mental images and stereotypes about the past...
Scene shifting: Using visuals for chronology
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Chronology & Topics at Key Stage 2
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The Nearly Complete History Of Almost Everything outlines the chronology of various aspects of our lives, and gives a flavour of the enormity at first glanceof ‘teaching chronology'. Topics, which are not tied to a particular...
Chronology & Topics at Key Stage 2
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Music and history combine at Key Stage 2
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Section 1: Introduction
Music is a powerful, emotive subject to enrich Historical, Geographical and Social Understanding. The Historical Association has a long and proud tradition of working closely with the Schools Music Association. In 2005, to...
Music and history combine at Key Stage 2
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William Brookes and the Olympic Games
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History flows like a river, sometimes quiet and unobtrusive, sometimes a raging torrent with wide-ranging effects on the world around us. It is punctuated by momentous events and significant individuals, who impact on its direction and...
William Brookes and the Olympic Games
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Local History and the 2012 Olympics
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
With the 2012 London Olympics rapidly approaching, you are probably marvelling at what a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity this is and what amazing classroom teaching opportunities it might bring.
You have probably already been inundated with ideas for...
Local History and the 2012 Olympics
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Saltaire: Planning for an effective learning experience on a living site
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In the autumn of 2009 I agreed to contribute to a project looking at how Saltaire village, Bradford could be developed as an educational site. This is a very popular site visited by many local schools,...
Saltaire: Planning for an effective learning experience on a living site
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Teaching history to young children
Article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History is a subject whose meaning is properly appreciated only in our maturity. In their old age we find those we consider wisest turning to Gibbon, Burckhardt, and Thucydides. The richness and endlessly elaborated meaning of...
Teaching history to young children
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Artefacts and art facts: images of Sir Francis Drake
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
Editorial note: This article reveals the power of the Internet in helping us all, adults and children, to bring portraits like Drake's to life. So, as you read, follow the links.
Artefacts and art facts: images of Sir Francis Drake
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Planning with literacy
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History is a subject which of necessity makes extensive use of language in all its forms and so the links with literacy are many. Cooper (2000), Bage (1999), Hoodless (1998) and Nichol, in the Nuffield History...
Planning with literacy
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The History around us: Local history
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History is an important aspect of the development of even very young children. They need to begin to develop the foundations of an understanding of the past and how it has developed and affected our present....
The History around us: Local history
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Whose history is it anyway?
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The main goals of educating children are meeting their educational and achievement needs. Herein is the challenge. Our classrooms are a cornucopia of diversity. The most prominent or acknowledged being gender, class, religion and ethnicity. Some...
Whose history is it anyway?
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Children's Thinking: Developmental psychology and history education
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Editorial note: Hilary Cooper outlines the main features of historical thinking. These ideas are embedded in the government's current requirements for teaching National Curriculum History [England]
Introduction
It is important that children develop a coherent, chronological...
Children's Thinking: Developmental psychology and history education
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Learning what a place does and what we do for it
Primary History article
Please note: This article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated.
Why teach children about architecture and the built environment?
Because they shape the future and because they already change our architecture and define the public realm everyday through their actions. Learning about architecture and the built...
Learning what a place does and what we do for it
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Dealing with the dead: Identity and community - Monuments, memorials and local history
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Death is one of the most sensitive and controversial issues that teachers encounter, linked inextricably as it is to identity. I think it sometimes escapes our attention that, as teachers of history, we constantly deal...
Dealing with the dead: Identity and community - Monuments, memorials and local history
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The true end of archaeology?
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Wow! The most magical words you can hear from a child. How do we get this wow factor? In my experience, archaeology is full of wow. It was Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1954 who wrote...
The true end of archaeology?
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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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Here come the Vikings! Making a saga out of a crisis
Primary History Article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What are your first impressions when you think of Alfred the Great? Perhaps it's the story of the heroic individual being humbled by burning the cakes or for those of a certain age, it may...
Here come the Vikings! Making a saga out of a crisis
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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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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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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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Cabinets of Curiosities, The History of Museums
Article
Delving into the origin and history of museums, one finds that particular themes emerge which are still present amongst the underpinning dynamics of museums in the 21st Century. Inseparable from the story of museums and galleries, for example, are the notions of ‘collecting’ and ‘curiosity’ and likewise, one’s attention is...
Cabinets of Curiosities, The History of Museums
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Making the Modern World: The shock of the real at the science museum
Primary History article
Making the Modern World is a vast, exuberant exposition of the real deal. From Arkwright's textile machines that kick-started the industrial revolution to the first Apple computer; from a pair of patented genetically-modified mice to the Apollo 10 command module that orbited the Moon - ons of the industrialised world...
Making the Modern World: The shock of the real at the science museum
