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...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Editorial comment: A History of the World is the most creative, imaginative and dynamic development in primary History Education for thirty years. It ties in perfectly with and supports the government's re-vitalisation of primary education that...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Editorial note: Hilary Cooper outlines the main features of historical thinking. These ideas are embedded in the government's current requirements for teaching National Curriculum History [England] Introduction It is important that children develop a coherent, chronological...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. The Nearly Complete History Of Almost Everything outlines the chronology of various aspects of our lives, and gives a flavour of the enormity at first glanceof ‘teaching chronology'. Topics, which are not tied to a particular...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Editorial note: This short paper introduces a highly creative, imaginative and enthralling case-study of a local history project for year 6 pupils. The teaching programme has a chronological spine that provides coherence and focus. Chronology is...

Introduction: Research into chronological understanding Chronological understanding is both one of history's most important disciplinary organising concepts (Lee and Shemilt: 2004) required for developing a full understanding of history, and certainly one of the most researched, though often with a broader remit that just historical understanding. It is possible to sympathise...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. I chose Horrible Histories for this exploration of children's understanding of chronology because I thought it would be fun - and I approve of the Horrible Histories. They use sources, question sources, provide alternative interpretations and...

In its latest triennial history survey report, History for all, Ofsted concluded that, ‘history teaching was good or better in most primary schools' and, ‘most pupils reached the  end of Key Stage 2 with detailed knowledge derived from well-taught studies of individual topics'. The report went on to note, though,...

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...

Although much of the Key Stage 2 history curriculum relates to the period before 1066, we are expected to include 'a study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066' (DfE, 2013,p.5) This raises two questions:a) How can a post-1066 topic be related...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Research during the last ninety years has suggested that ‘time' concepts, such as chronology, duration and the usage of dating systems are difficult for children to assimilate. However, my research suggests that temporal concepts can be...

The prospect of teaching Benin as a non-European Study within the time frame 900-1300 AD is challenging! Traditional oral evidence  suggests that the critical event during this period in Benin's past was a transition from the Ogiso to the Eweka Dynasty, named after its first Oba, which resulted in it...

Events which encapsulate family, community, national and global history provide rich opportunities for engaging children. Some of these draw on positive memories associated with past events: the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, how people responded to the first flight to the moon, the Millennium celebrations. Yet it is perhaps gruelling...

One of the hardest things for children to develop in history is a sense of period. What was it really like to live in a Stone Age house for example, to get up every morning knowing if you didn’t collect food or hunt something then there would be nothing to...

One of the key aims of the English history National Curriculum is to ensure that pupils ‘know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative’. Teaching chronology is also important in the Netherlands. In this article we cover some aspects of teaching and recent research from...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources see: Chronology: Developing a coherent knowledge (2014) Scheme of work (KS2): Chronology: Books through time Scheme of work (KS2): Chronology: Numbers through time  Britain and World timeline 4000-2000BC Britain and World timeline 2000BC to 0BC Britain and World timeline, 0BC...