The groups were then given the freedom to sort the cards into whatever groups they liked, but with the proviso that there were no more than five different groupings and no less than two. In addition, the pupils were told to devise a heading, of no more than five words, for each grouping. The aim was for the headings to be so ‘helpful' that the other groups in the class could guess correctly what cards were listed under each heading.

 

 

The final task would be for the pupils to convert the headings into sentences, and for these sentences to become a topic starter for each paragraph of a piece of extended writing that answered the question: ‘Why did the fire get out of control and destroy so much of London?'. It was this same style of teaching history as an enquiry, with a sequence of lessons, that helped the child who wrote the essay on the Battle of Hastings to produce such a good piece of work.

In her conclusion, Christine Counsell said that the most important point would be for the children to understand, when they were writing an essay, that there is an organisational problem to be solved Teachers must "make it easy for the children by showing them how difficult it is". Pupils can be shown the difficulty by doing organisational activities, like card sorting, in which there are no right and no wrong answers. Many children find history difficult because they like questions with simple answers. There are no simple answers in historical enquiry.

"History teaching is about cultivating readiness. It is training children for uncertainty."

The process of cardsorting in its various forms, prior to extended writing, can help pupils to get use to this uncertainty.