Local Study

The importance of local history for developing a sense of place and identity is emphasised by the National Curriculum. The local landscape and buildings can often reveal a great deal about the use of land and the type of people who lived there in the past. Buildings and landscape can reveal how long a heritage the place has had. Monuments and local heritage or parish records can highlight individual local heroes or provide a window into the lives of ordinary local people in times gone by. How similar or different were their lives? Often, the local picture can also help to reveal the national or international picture.

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  • The History around us: Local history

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. History is an important aspect of the development of even very young children. They need to begin to develop the foundations of an understanding of the past and how it has developed and affected our present....

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  • A Local Study

    Article

    Please note: these free resources pre-date the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources see:  Local significant individuals Scheme of work: Local history - the story of our high street Scheme of work: Local history - transport Using a house for your local history study Lessons available on this site...

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  • Urban spaces: inner-city Leeds

    Article

    Please note: this free resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. This is an account of a series of six lessons focusing on a local urban square. Teachers can adapt this to suit their own circumstances. The teaching took place in an inner-city Leeds primary school, with pupils from 48 different...

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  • Learning to engage with documents through role play

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. First let me say that I did not research the materials used or plan this lesson. For this I must acknowledge, with thanks, that this is the work of my colleague, Mike Huggins, and the senior...

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  • Using classic fiction to support the study of childhood in Victorian times

    Article

    Please note: This article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references may be outdated. Classic fiction provides useful sources of information for investigating the lives, beliefs and values of people in the past. In this article Ann Cowling describes activities undertaken with student teachers which may also serve as models...

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  • Local history: young children using written, printed and multimodal sources

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Editorial note: Jo Barkham shows how creative, challenging and stimulating teaching can engage even the youngest pupils in the reading of written and printed text and multi-modal sources. She continues her account in the next edition...

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  • Newspaper Collection

    Article

    Richard Heaton's collection of newspapers consists of over 800 free searchable extracts and full transcripts of English and Irish, Georgian and early Victorian Regional newspapers. It is one the largest free collections on the web full of unique material bringing you one step closer to your ancestors and their world,...

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  • Primary History 55: Doing Local History

    Article

    Editorial 05 In my view: 'Be bloody, bold and resolute'. Two possible interpretations of 'Local History' - Colin Richards (Read article) 06 In my view: Doing local history - John Fines (Read article) 08 In my view: Local history for children: Through the eyes of a B. Ed. Student -...

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  • The history teacher's craft: Doing local History through the eyes of W. G. Hoskins

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Editorial comment: When teaching local history we all have an idea of what it is: both as a body of knowledge - information, dates, facts and substantive concepts - and as what that knowledge is based...

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  • 'Be bloody, bold and resolute': Two possible interpretations of 'local history'

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. As a pre-Plowden primary teacher who queued to get my copy of that report in 1967 and as a contributory author to the Cambridge Primary Review (Alexander, 2009) forty-two years later I can claim, not an...

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  • Doing local history

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Editorial comment: ‘Doing Local History' permeates John Fines' oeuvre on the teaching of history - it is both warp and weft. In introducing a Local History case study John outlined the nature and purposes of Local...

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  • Local history for children: through the eyes of a B.ED. student

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. My favourite subject in primary school was always history. I loved everything about history, but in particular I liked learning about the history of the local area. I went to school in a small Yorkshire town...

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  • How can citizenship education contribute to effective local history?

    Article

    Please note: This article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated. Citizenship education in primary schools asks children to dig deeply into issues, to gain skills to become advocates and champions for the views of themselves and others and to be confident to take action on...

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  • Saltaire: Planning for an effective learning experience on a living site

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. In the autumn of 2009 I agreed to contribute to a project looking at how Saltaire village, Bradford could be developed as an educational site. This is a very popular site visited by many local schools,...

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  • Local history fieldwork

    Article

    Successful Local History fieldwork How can you and your children get the most out of a site visit? Read this brief account of an example of Local History fieldwork with children: it was based on the NPHP Top Ten Pointers...

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  • 'Doing Local History' through maps and drama

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Editorial note: John Fines produced two case studies of Local History for the Nuffield Primary History Project. One on them is published here for the first time.

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  • ICT and Local History

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. It is the year 3002 AD. The spaceship hovers over the surface of the earth, locked in to the spot where the Bolham time capsule is buried. One thousand years ago the fifteen 9 and 10...

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  • Local railway history: using visual resources

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Before the 1960s British Rail's spider-web network of railway lines reached every town and thousands of villages. Where you live would have been within a thirty minute journey from a station; scroll down to look at...

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  • Planning for local history

    Article

    Editorial comment: Barbara writes from the viewpoint of a classroom teacher facing the challenge of ‘Doing local history' for the first time.

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  • A view from the classroom: Teachers TV, The Staffordshire Hoard And 'Doing History'

    Article

    When the Historical Association was approached by Teachers' TV to produce ‘Great Ideas for Teaching History' at Key Stage 2, it was inevitable that I, as a full time teacher on the Primary Committee, would have no escape. My school agreed I could take part, with the involvement of two...

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