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The view from the classroom
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As teachers we are all responsible, with our pupils, for the environment within our classrooms. Together we create calm and order, challenge and activity. The environment beyond is of infinite variety.
The view from my...
The view from the classroom
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Building learning places
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The built environment is hugely important to all of us, allowing us to live our lives in particular ways, and perhaps even constraining our lives in ways we don't yet recognise or understand. The buildings...
Building learning places
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Archaeology and the Early Years: The Noah's Ark Experience
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The authors of this article first worked together on a number of small scale excavations while Bev was still a primary school teacher in the Bradford area. When Bev changed roles to train...
Archaeology and the Early Years: The Noah's Ark Experience
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Case Study: Working with gifted and talented children at an Iron Age hill fort in north Somerset
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The phone call was over - manna from heaven. The opportunity to work with a ‘real' archaeologist on a ‘real' Iron Age site seemed far too good to be true. The cluster of eight South...
Case Study: Working with gifted and talented children at an Iron Age hill fort in north Somerset
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Case Study: Classroom archaeology. Sutton Hoo, or the mystery of the empty grave
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
‘Would you like to go for a walk in the woods on the other side of the river? I asked my wife on a spring day in 1982. Happily she assented, and we drove off...
Case Study: Classroom archaeology. Sutton Hoo, or the mystery of the empty grave
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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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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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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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Case Study: Investigating a picture in Key Stage 1
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The teacher, Angela, brought from home a large coloured picture: in the middle a photograph of her grandfather in uniform, taken in 1917. The reading of the picture produced a flood of writing...
Case Study: Investigating a picture in Key Stage 1
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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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Drama - Choosing an approach
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
There is a range of drama strategies that we use all the time. The important point is to select a strategy with which you feel confident. For example, the collective making of a map by the...
Drama - Choosing an approach
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Think Bubble 48: Lighting fires
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
I have a very old photo in my ‘archive' taken in the 1970s of a much-younger me dressed in, what can only be described as, a vague suggestion of 18th Century costume - thread-bare jacket, a...
Think Bubble 48: Lighting fires
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Case Study 1: The Mr Men mystery of the missing cake
Primary History article
[Editorial note: this Case Study was an element in a yearlong Gifted and Talented Intervention Strategy that was the outcome of a NAGTY Developing Expertise Award teacher scholarship. There were seven ‘interventions’: the Mr Men Case Study and Case Study 2 were two of these. Full details of the DEA...
Case Study 1: The Mr Men mystery of the missing cake
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In my view: Why we need a national talent search to identify and nurture our most able children
Primary History article
[Editorial note: Sir Cyril Taylor provides an overview of the challenge for the maintained sector that the education of Gifted and Talented pupils presents. In relation to the primary phase reliable data is not available: but there is no evidence that G&T provision is any better for 3-11 year olds...
In my view: Why we need a national talent search to identify and nurture our most able children
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Engaging with controversial issues through drama
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The idea of children actively participating in their own education continues to be central to drama education. This same idea is also fundamental to the underlying ethos of citizenship education.There is a side to drama...
Engaging with controversial issues through drama
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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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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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20 Years On, The 1986 Domesday Project
Primary History article
The mention of 'The Domesday Project' to any teacher who was in the classroom in 1985 usually triggers a very vivid memory of involvement in a national survey to capture life at that time. Teachers of over one million pupils in both primary and secondary schools volunteered to be included...
20 Years On, The 1986 Domesday Project
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Using children's literature to look at bias and stereotyping
Primary History article
We have come to understand that modern children's literature often provides a way of examining a range of social and moral issues, affording educators the opportunity to discuss issues such as bias and stereotyping. Many adults have seen the possibilities here to contextualise classroom incidents differently, or to explore themes...
Using children's literature to look at bias and stereotyping
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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
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The impact of World War II on British children's gendered perceptions of contemporary Germany
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated.
This article reports some surprising gender-based trends indicated by a small scale piece of classroom research looking into incidental responses of Year 6 pupils to the teaching of Study Unit 11b (Britain Since...
The impact of World War II on British children's gendered perceptions of contemporary Germany
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Questions you have always wanted to ask about...Using photographs as sources of evidence
Primary History article
Alan Hodkinson answers questions about using photographs as sources of evidence.
Questions you have always wanted to ask about...Using photographs as sources of evidence
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A Load of Rubbish: Using Victorian throwaways in the classroom
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
There are many effective ways of using artefacts and resources for the Victorians, but how many teachers have considered using the rubbish that the Victorians literally threw away? This material can cost nothing or be...
A Load of Rubbish: Using Victorian throwaways in the classroom
