-
Political literacy: citizenship through the English national curriculum's the Romans in Britain study unit
Primary History article
Hilary Claire raised fundamental issues about the relationship between History and Citizenship for the development of a sense of identity. Her paper stresses the importance of sceptical thinking, perspective, sequence and progression - the essential chronology that underpins pupil's education for citizenship in the timeframe that history provides...
Political literacy: citizenship through the English national curriculum's the Romans in Britain study unit
-
From Champion to Hero: Engaging Pupils in a study of significant Olympians
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Allocated the task of researching and presenting ideas for teaching about significant Olympians, I thought: ‘Brilliant, this is the easy one'. How wrong can one be! I expected to be able to access a plethora of...
From Champion to Hero: Engaging Pupils in a study of significant Olympians
-
Primary History and planning for teaching the Olympics - four curricular models
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Three curricular editions of Primary History, PH 50, Autumn 2008 , PH 53, Autumn 2009 and PH 57, Spring 2011 are directly relevant to teaching the Olympics.
PH 50, Autumn 2008 History Education in the 21st...
Primary History and planning for teaching the Olympics - four curricular models
-
Teaching history and geography together in a meaningful way
WHEN 2 + 2 = 5!
This article explores some of the ways history and geography can be taught side by side, so that the sum of the parts adds up to more than the original. How can we teach history with geography and vice versa, to the benefit of both, while fulfilling the aims of...
Teaching history and geography together in a meaningful way
-
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Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.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
-
Keeping the content manageable in Key Stage 2
Article
This section offers guidance on how Key Stage 2 history can be organised through the use of a number of key investigative questions for the most commonly taught areas of study.
Keeping the content manageable in Key Stage 2
-
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
-
Early Islamic civilisation
Primary History article
The Primary National Curriculum pinpoints Early Islamic Civilisation as Baghdad c. AD 900 - yet it was so much more. For approximately a thousand years after AD 700 there was an extraordinary amount of activity that radiated out from Baghdad and along a glittering crescent through North Africa and into...
Early Islamic civilisation
-
A creative Egyptian project
Primary History article
Ideally when teaching history, teachers will look to deliver projects that will engage and motivate, hopefully making the hard work of being creative stimulating and rewarding, based upon questioning, enquiry, investigation of sources and reaching conclusions grounded in the evidence.Ancient Egypt is one of those history topics which, because it...
A creative Egyptian project
-
What made Cleopatra so special?
Article
Ancient Egyptian civilisation is rich and mysterious with distinctive visual imagery and strange animal-headed gods. The exotic differences of the society have always intrigued the western imagination and so they continue to ensure that this is a popular unit with both teachers and children. There are plentiful resources with new...
What made Cleopatra so special?
-
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
-
What do we mean by Big Picture History?
Primary History article
Perhaps the best way to start thinking about Big Picture history is to say what it is not - it is not about rote learning dates or remembering ‘famous people and events' - Alfred the Great, The Battle of Hastings, Henry VIII, Florence Nightingale ....and so on! This factual knowledge...
What do we mean by Big Picture History?
-
HA Enquiry Toolkit
How to build an effective historical enquiry at key stages 1 and 2
An enquiry approach is becoming more popular for teaching many primary curriculum subjects. However, enquiry has always been the backbone of good history teaching. Knowing what constitutes a good historical enquiry and how to build one that will enable your pupils to get better at history is not as easy...
HA Enquiry Toolkit
-
Celebrate your sporting heritage
Article
National Sporting Heritage Day takes place on 30 September every year. It aims to support schools and other community organisations to engage withtheir local sporting heritage, explore the heritage on their doorstep, celebrate and share the information that they find and inspire children and young people to find out more....
Celebrate your sporting heritage
-
Britain's settlement by Anglo-Saxons and Scots
Primary History Article
Anglo-Saxons have been a part of the primary national curriculum from the onset so they may not be as unfamiliar to teachers as some themes. Many teachers also report that pupils enjoy studying them so there is clearly much in their favour.
That does not mean, however, that all is...
Britain's settlement by Anglo-Saxons and Scots
-
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
-
Benin: exploring an African empire at Key Stage 2
Primary History article
Karin Doull reminds us of the value in studying Benin as a non-European study area and suggests how it might be approached, stressing the importance of placing it in context through comparison. The article addresses worthwhile aspects, key concepts and questions as well as furnishing some key information including extracts...
Benin: exploring an African empire at Key Stage 2
-
Women in parliament since 1918
Primary History article
At the 1918 election just one woman, Constance Markievicz, won a seat, in Dublin, for Sinn Fein. She was in prison at the time. At the time, of course, the whole of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. All 73 Sinn Fein MPs refused to take up their seats, and...
Women in parliament since 1918
-
What confuses primary children in history...
... and what can we do about it?
Young children who automatically see shiny things as new no matter what their age, those who mix up technology from one age with another, those who dismiss people in the past as stupid because they did not have the possessions we have today, those who equate the age of a...
What confuses primary children in history...
-
Our Iron Age challenge
Developing historical understanding through building an iron age house
The University of Chichester’s three-year BA (Hons) Degree for Primary Education and Teaching involves learning how to provide rigorous and creative educational opportunities for children. The course involves one creativity module each year. The final one involves the development of skills and confidence in creating problem-solving.
Four of us were...
Our Iron Age challenge
-
Using Horrible History to develop primary literacy and history
Primary History article
When I started planning for my Key Stage 2 literacy lessons last year, I wanted to link them to my history topic, the Tudors, and I also needed them to cover a significant amount of non-fiction English objectives, having focused on fiction and poetry texts in the previous term. One...
Using Horrible History to develop primary literacy and history
-
Resourcing primary history: How to avoid going for any old thing
Primary History article
The recent survey of history teaching in primary schools conducted by the Historical Association revealed that the majority of respondents felt that they were short of resources to teach the revised National Curriculum. Not surprisingly most schools look to find resources that do the job cheaply. It is a truism...
Resourcing primary history: How to avoid going for any old thing
-
Poverty in Britain: A development study for Key Stage 2
Primary History article
One of the requirements for Key Stage 2 history is for some history that extends beyond 1066. Various suggestions have been made including an examination of change within a social theme. The example given is Crime and Punishment but the opportunities for something interesting are vast. This article focuses on...
Poverty in Britain: A development study for Key Stage 2
-
Promoting talk during history lessons
Article
There are various reasons why pupils should be offered the opportunity to converse together during history. It can definitely be enjoyable for pupils to talk together and it helps to teach children how to share ideas. Pupils talking while working in a group may also use their peers' talk to...
Promoting talk during history lessons
-
Assessment and Progression without levels
Primary History article
The new (2014) Primary History National Curriculum is finally upon us. The first thing you might notice is that the level descriptions have gone. These were first introduced in 1995 and became the mainstay for assessing pupil progression and attainment in Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 across schools in...
Assessment and Progression without levels
