All schemes for education involve some consideration of the surrounding society, its existing structure and how it will-and should-develop. Thus the interaction of educational provision and institutions with patterns of employment, social mobility and political behaviour are fascinatingly complex. The spate of valuable local studies emphasizes this complexity and makes...

Why visit a cemetery as part of the history curriculum? Local studies now feature prominently in the primary history curriculum for both key stages. This development challenges teachers to find easilyaccessible, inexpensive and relevant resources on their doorstep. A rich resource which has traditionally been overlooked is the local churchyard...

The Historical Association In Alliance With Association for Language Learning. Cross-Curricular Unit: Year 5/6 French and History. A Victorian Christmas.

The chance to pilot the new National Curriculum presented me with the opportunity I was looking for to revamp a tired Year 2 curriculum. I began teaching in Year 2 two years ago, having previously spent five years working in Key Stage 2. As in many other schools across the...

The Victorians is a much-loved unit of work in many schools and some teachers were disappointed to see it had been removed but there are still ways to continue to teach it under the 2014 National Curriculum. In many localities there will be a huge variety of Victorian buildings - including...

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...

In this set of podcasts Project Director Professor Jim Secord and Associate Director Dr Alison Pearn of the Darwin Correspondence Project discuss the life, work and legacy of Charles Darwin.

Editorial note: Alison raises crucial issues about pupils developing a sense of identity in a multi-racial environment through the medium of history. History provides a sense of belonging to all pupils if we acknowledge the rich origins of modern society's multiethnic routes - by origin, we are all immigrants. The...

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'...

The Victorians website   Take a look at a brand new history web resource for primary school children from The National Archives and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Get your pupils to work and think like historians using primary sources. There are seven themed ‘units' of study: Start Here, Queen Victoria,...

The problem Pupils' background knowledge - Tudors and Victorians Here at Knebworth House, primary school children visit us to enhance their learning of both the Tudors and the Victorians, in particular; both are popular periods to study within the primary curriculum and both have special significance for us at Knebworth....

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...

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...

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 -...

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.

Please note: these free resources pre-date the 2014 National Curriculum. You could start the Victorians with a story. See the Victorian chimney sweep short lesson exemplar and the Upstairs Downstairs story in the History section of the Urban Spaces material. Lessons and short lesson exemplars available on this site: Victorian Britain: short...

Victorian era | Questions | Industrial revolution | Social reforms | Empire | Teaching the Victorians | Citizenship | Victorian achievements | Key concepts < This resource is free for everyone For access to hundreds of other high-quality resources by primary history experts along with free or discounted CPD and...

Please note: this free resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For a more recent resource, see our Primary scheme of work on Brunel. The focus for this literacy hour lesson was a picture, used as a text. The literacy hour genre was non-fiction. In it we studied a specific Victorian, the engineer...

This resource is free to everyone. For access to hundreds of other high-quality resources by primary history experts along with free or discounted CPD and membership of a thriving community of teachers and subject leaders, join the Historical Association today Please note: this free resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum....

Please note: this free resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources see: Victorians (Primary History article, 2014) Scheme of work: Sarah Forbes Bonetta Scheme of work: Brunel In this lesson children pursued an historical enquiry, raising questions and using original sources. They gained an understanding of conditions in early...