This Great Fire lesson focuses on developing children’s powers of explanations. They will already have looked at the sequence of events and will be able to offer a few simple reasons.
This lesson aims to take them beyond a simple list towards deeper understanding of why this was such a big fire. After all, there would have been very many fires in 17th century England !!
Learning objectives
- children can distinguish between simple reasons and mere description
- they can give three valid reasons for the fire, to do with the nature of the buildings, the streets, the weather and poor fire fighting
- pupils can compare three contrasting accounts and discuss the similarities and differences
- children are able to give their own explanation with confidence
- more able pupils explore short-term factors such as wind direction and long dry, hot summer and can identify reasons from a newspaper facsimile
- extension: more able
