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The Victorians
Topic Pack
The Topic Pack gives you a brief summary of the Victorians.
The Victorians
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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
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Dora Thewlis: Mill girl activist
Primary History article
Dora Thewlis was born in 1890 in Yorkshire to a family of textile workers employed in the mills around the Huddersfield Canal. She followed her mother and elder siblings into the mill at the age of 10, earning around £1 a week.
Dora’s family, and especially her mother, were very...
Dora Thewlis: Mill girl activist
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Using the back cover image: Moustache cup
Primary History feature
The moustache cup I purchased on ebay is one of the most popular artefacts I use with students in a good game of ‘guess the object’. It has a wonderful quality of being at the same time familiar yet strange. Despite telling the students not to start with the question...
Using the back cover image: Moustache cup
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Your Local Railway: a local history investigation in Key Stage 2
Primary History article
In this article Tim Lomas discusses one of the best resourced themes you can find: your local railway.
Railways make one of the best themes for a historical study. No place has ever been far from a railway station even if Dr Beeching wiped out one-third of the network in...
Your Local Railway: a local history investigation in Key Stage 2
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Using the back cover image: Exploring the collections of Victorian naturalists
Primary History feature
Many museums around the country house natural history collections that offer children the opportunity to engage with a wide variety of species from around the world. Using the collections of Victorian explorers and naturalists offers children a historical perspective with a cross-curricular approach which has a great appeal. Yet for...
Using the back cover image: Exploring the collections of Victorian naturalists
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What can you do with a Victorian Trade Directory…?
Primary History article
What is a trade directory?
Trade directories are the equivalent of the telephone directory and the Yellow Pages. They were published on a county or city basis every year and contain detailed descriptions of every village and town in the county. They also contain pages and pages of advertisements, for...
What can you do with a Victorian Trade Directory…?
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Northamptonshire in a Global Context
Key Stages 2 and 3
Produced by the Northamptonshire Black History Association and originally published in 2008, this is one of a set of resources for schools offering a more inclusive map of the past that includes an appreciation of Black History within the local, national and global context. The resources provide a range of opportunities to promote diversity within the curriculum....
Northamptonshire in a Global Context
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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
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Historical Enquiries and Interpretations
Transition Training Session 1
This is the first of 5 sessions arising from the 2005 KS2-KS3 History Transition Project:
Transition training session 1: Historical Enquiries & Interpretations
Transition training session 2: Using ICT in the teaching of history
Transition training session 3: Extended writing in history
Transition training session 4: Joan of Arc -...
Historical Enquiries and Interpretations
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Victorian Britain: short lessons and exemplars
Multipage Article
Please note: these resources pre-date the current National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A series of lessons, exemplars and guides to help you teach your students about Victorian Britain.
Victorian Britain: short lessons and exemplars
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Your Victorian (And Greek!) Olympic Games
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The teaching ideas below are adapted from an idea the great John Fines developed for teaching Ancient Greek science. With active teacher support and guidance, it requires the pupils to use what they know, and their...
Your Victorian (And Greek!) Olympic Games
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Victorian Britain and the Victorian World
E-CPD
This E-CPD unit has a number of possible focuses within the broader topic of Victorian Britain and the wider Victorian world. This follows a pattern that is strong within the structures of the School History Project. Each sub-topic needs to mirror what is best in history education at primary level, including...
Victorian Britain and the Victorian World
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Lesson Planning Recipe
Primary History article
Learning objectives
What questions should the children be able to answer at the end of your teaching of the topic? Pare this down to 6 key questions, one for each lesson of a 6-week term. What sub-questions will the lesson address and open up for the next step in the...
Lesson Planning Recipe
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A Project on Working Class Education in the Victorian Period
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In the third year at London Metropolitan University, history B.ED students research and prepare a resource about an aspect of life in C19th Britain for use with their chosen age group. Nicky made a book,...
A Project on Working Class Education in the Victorian Period
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Planning a Victorian School Day
Primary History article
Learning is more engaging and better retained when it is contextualised and when it appeals to a variety of learning styles. How better to bring history alive, than by having it invade children's school environment and transform their everyday experience? Getting away from predominantly auditory learning, the printed word and...
Planning a Victorian School Day
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Reading, recovering and re-visioning Victorian Women
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Knowledge of the experience of women during Victorian times has developed considerably during the last thirty years. History had a privileged place within the British Women’s Liberation movement in the early 1970s and reclaiming the...
Reading, recovering and re-visioning Victorian Women
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Queen Victoria's visit to Wolverhampton, November 30 1866
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
When Prince Albert died in 1861 Queen Victoria went into deep mourning and ceased all public duties. By 1866 she had still not made any public appearances. Wolverhampton, like many other towns, raised a subscription to commission a statue in Albert’s memory....
Queen Victoria's visit to Wolverhampton, November 30 1866
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Stories to extend and support the study of life in Victorian Times
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
The study of life in Victorian Times with Key Stage 2 pupils, or aspects of life beyond living memory (now ‘the more distant past’) with children in Key Stage 1 is surely one of the richest and most popular historical themes. Some...
Stories to extend and support the study of life in Victorian Times
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Queen Victoria as a Politician
Article
Even had Queen Victoria not presided over the achievements of the age which bears her name, her career would still hold a fascination for the historian. She was, for one thing, the solitary woman in a male political world. She was possessed of a personality at once perceptive and simple,...
Queen Victoria as a Politician
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One of my favourite history places: Bournville
Article
One of my favourite places is Bournville Village in the south of Birmingham – every time I go there it feels as if I am entering a different world, away from the noise and bustle of the city. Less than five minutes' walk away from the tourist attraction of Cadbury World is the village...
One of my favourite history places: Bournville
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From Sail to Steam
Classic Pamphlet
From the time when primitive man first went adrift on a bundle of reeds or learnt to balance himself on a floating log, to the days where his descendants, no more than a few generations ago, raced scrambling aloft to trim the towering sails of a full-rigged ship, the skill...
From Sail to Steam
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Museums, schools and creativity: How learning can be enhanced
Article
What do we mean by creativity?In the last few years there has been an emphasis on the ‘creative curriculum', ‘creativity' and ‘creative teaching and learning', but there has not always been a shared understanding of what this means. This article uses the definition from ‘Creativity - find it, promote it'...
Museums, schools and creativity: How learning can be enhanced
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The Great Exhibition
Article
‘Of all the decades to be young in, a wise man would choose the 1850s’ concludes G.M. Young in his Portrait of An Age. His choice is understandable. Historians and contemporaries have long viewed the middle years of the century as a ‘plateau of peace and prosperity’, an ‘age of...
The Great Exhibition
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Victorian Life: Clothes
Book Review
Victorian Life: Clothes by Liz Gogerly. Wayland, 2008; ISBN: 978 0 7502 5368 0
Reviewed by Alf Wilkinson
An exploration of Victorian clothes - for rich and poor - for upper KS2 pupils. The text briefly sets the context of the Victorian period, and uses examples of famous people -...
Victorian Life: Clothes
