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Significance
Primary History article
What makes a person or event significant? When looking at the past, some people or events stand out in our minds. Individuals such as Florence Nightingale or Walter Tull at Key Stage 1 or events such as the Blitz at Key Stage 2 may have particular resonance. However, if we...
Significance
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The Roman Empire and its impact on Britain
Primary History article
Before the Romans arrived the islands which now make up Britain were populated with a variety of relatively large and small fortified or defended settlements. The people living here were usually part of tribes or clans and they probably raided each other's territory for cattle and other animals. The majority of people farmed in some way,...
The Roman Empire and its impact on Britain
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Texts for the Classroom: Ma’at’s Feather
Primary History article
Alf Wilkinson discusses a book first published in 2008, and set in Ancient Egypt.
Ma’at’s Feather is the story of Qen, a young boy growing up in ancient Egypt. He is part of a farming family, and we discover how their livelihood is totally dependent on the River Nile...
Texts for the Classroom: Ma’at’s Feather
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The Great Exhibition of 1851: teaching a significant event at Key Stage 1
Primary History article
The Great Exhibition allows pupils to consider the impact of a particular event. The exhibition provides a means to look at Britain’s wider role in the world and social and technical developments such as the impact of the railways. Pupils can explore a variety of sources, consider the substantive concepts...
The Great Exhibition of 1851: teaching a significant event at Key Stage 1
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Ancient Sumer
Primary History article
For many teachers and children alike, Ancient Sumer will be completely new. Although Sumer has always been an option for teaching about Early Civilisations, the fame of Ancient Egypt, as well as being a tried-and-tested topic, has meant that Sumer has perhaps been overlooked. There is little danger of failing...
Ancient Sumer
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How an atlas and a very old map can help us make sense of the ancient Greeks
Primary History article
The ancient Greeks were a maritime people – they travelled and traded vast distances by sea, but rarely left sight of land. They were also a very divided nation. Separate city states fiercely guarded their independence, only uniting [sometimes!] to fight against a common enemy like the Persians. The Greeks all...
How an atlas and a very old map can help us make sense of the ancient Greeks
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Ten texts for the Platinum Jubilee
Primary History article
With the Platinum Jubilee approaching later this year and celebrations planned for June 2022, here is a round-up of ten fiction and non-fiction books which will help you plan and find resources for your school celebrations...
Ten texts for the Platinum Jubilee
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50th anniversary of the UK’s first official Pride march: 1 July 2022
Primary History article
2022 is a special year as it marks the 50th anniversary of the first official UK Pride march which was held in London on 1 July 1972. The Pride movement, and events like the London in Pride march, were inspired and influenced by the Stonewall riots. These were protests that took place...
50th anniversary of the UK’s first official Pride march: 1 July 2022
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Implementing the 2014 curriculum in Year 2
Primary History article
The chance to pilot the new National Curriculum presented me with the opportunity I was looking for to revamp a tired Year 2 curriculum. I began teaching in Year 2 two years ago, having previously spent five years working in Key Stage 2. As in many other schools across the...
Implementing the 2014 curriculum in Year 2
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Britain and the wider world in Tudor times
Article
The first two articles in this series introduced three generic principles which might underpin planning a scheme of work in the KS2 History Curriculum. Article 1 (Jan 2001) drew on contemporary history to analyse and explain the principles. Article 2 (May 2001) was based mainly on material from the Victorian...
Britain and the wider world in Tudor times
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How did a volcano affect life in the Bronze Age?
Primary History article
Recent discoveries have greatly altered our view of life in the Bronze Age. Must Farm, for example, was built in the Cambridgeshire Fens around 1000 BCE.
Sometime around 1159 BCE (no-one is quite sure when) Hekla, a volcano in Iceland (a country no-one yet knew existed) erupted, throwing millions of...
How did a volcano affect life in the Bronze Age?
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Anglo-Saxon Women
Primary History Article
The Anglo-Saxon era is a diverse period that stretches across just over 650 years. Those we call Anglo-Saxons were not homogenous nor were their experiences. In AD 410 the Roman legions leave and the first Anglo-Saxon raiders appear. These pagan warrior bands would come to terrorise Romano-British settlements until, inevitably,...
Anglo-Saxon Women
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Stone Age to Iron Age - overview and depth
Primary History article
Stone Age to Iron Age covers around 10,000 years, between the last Ice Age and the coming of the Romans. Such a long period is difficult for children to imagine, but putting the children into a living time-line across the classroom might help. In one sense not a lot happens...
Stone Age to Iron Age - overview and depth
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The Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum
Primary History article
At this stage children should listen to stories, ask how and why; use the past, present and future tense; talk about the past and present in their own lives and the lives of family members; recognise similarities and differences between families and traditions, objects and materials; and role play and...
The Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum
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Beyond compare a study of Beatrix Potter and Benjamin Zephaniah
Primary History article
The Key Stage 1 National Curriculum encourages teachers to teach their pupils about ‘the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.’ (DfE, 2014, p. 205). Some teachers have begun to move away from the old favourite subject of Florence Nightingale and as...
Beyond compare a study of Beatrix Potter and Benjamin Zephaniah
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A cultural legacy: the theatre of ancient Greece
Primary History article
Sometimes it is not easy to understand how the different units of the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum were selected, but this is not true for the Ancient Greek unit. Since the renaissance period, knowledge of ‘the classics’ has been a central element for an educated man or woman. Ancient...
A cultural legacy: the theatre of ancient Greece
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Migration to Britain through time
Primary History article
Migration is rarely absent from the news and arouses political, social cultural and emotional responses which range from compassion to hostility, racism and anti-racism. By exploring migration in the past, it is possible for children to go beyond current issues and appreciate that, rather than being a recent characteristic of...
Migration to Britain through time
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Using artefacts to develop young children’s understanding of the past
Primary History article
In the children’s picture book Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, Wilfrid is a small boy who meets Miss Nancy, an old lady who has lost her memory. Wilfrid wants to help, and so he carefully fills a basket with special objects and takes them to her. He places a medal in...
Using artefacts to develop young children’s understanding of the past
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Extending the curriculum: why should we consider ‘value added’?
Primary History article
While the focus provided by the new Ofsted framework has allowed schools to begin to, perhaps, rebalance the curriculum, the time allocated to the foundation subjects is still fairly marginal in many schools. This means that hard decisions have to be taken about what to include and what to leave...
Extending the curriculum: why should we consider ‘value added’?
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The Blitz: All we need to know about World War II?
Primary History article
The Blitz of 1940 is certainly a significant event in Britain’s past, one which has repeatedly been drawn upon as a symbol of national consciousness. It was a time when most of Europe had been defeated by the Nazi regime in Germany, typically through ‘Blitzkrieg’ – or lightning war methods...
The Blitz: All we need to know about World War II?
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Trade and pilgrimage in the Abbasid Caliphate
Primary History article
The Abbasid Caliphate stretched from North Africa across to Afghanistan and the North West Frontier. Within the caliphate there were movements of people, goods and ideas. The golden period of this early Islamic caliphate was around 900 AD. As the caliphs were building a major trading empire across the Middle...
Trade and pilgrimage in the Abbasid Caliphate
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Case Study: Creative chronological thinking
Primary History article
Personal biographies
I often ask groups to collect and record their own personal chronologies. They are asked to bring in evidence to tell the stories of their own lives or of the life of a relative, which they will then weave into a ‘photo book' story. The photo books become...
Case Study: Creative chronological thinking
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The potty timeline: an effective way of using timelines
Primary History article
Timelines are a constant source of fascination. Rows of events and time periods all jostling for position on an eternal line, cramming together or strung out with wide gaps between them. In our primary classrooms, however, the vastness of timelines can be diminished as we crop them on computers and...
The potty timeline: an effective way of using timelines
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Case Study: Effectively using the census in the classroom
Primary History case study
The British government introduced the census in 1801 to count every man, woman and child in the UK. The Census has been repeated, with increasing detail, every 10 years, with the exception of 1941, since then. This gives us an amazing insight into Victorian and Edwardian life. But how can we...
Case Study: Effectively using the census in the classroom
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For whose God, King and country? Seeing the First World War through South Asian eyes
Primary History article
In October 1914 France faced defeat on what would later become the Western Front. If the Germans captured the channel ports then the small British Expeditionary Force (BEF) supporting the French would be cut off from Britain, and the channel ports themselves might be used to launch a German invasion of...
For whose God, King and country? Seeing the First World War through South Asian eyes
