Time is probably the concept most fundamental to understanding history. This presents problems, of course, particularly with the youngest children. But just because its a slippery concept doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan how we are going to introduce and develop a sense of time and have a clear what we might expect of our Y6 pupils by the end of their time ( there I go again! ) in primary school. If this was easy we’d have cracked it by now. Successive OFSTED reports lament the inability of pupils and often their teachers to make links between periods.Their view of the past is fragmentary and episodic and often very confused, they say.
So,if we know pupils find this difficult what can we do?
Try using Timebox
This is a radical NEW approach I have developed over the past years with amazing success. As the name suggests it is a simple box inside which are lots of images that become increasingly familiar to children as they move through the key stage.
At Key Stage 1. The pupils work in small groups with their own simple timeline. To start with, the children simply have now and then to sort out, using
