Keystage history

Smart Task: KS1 – Assessment in history

Key Stage 1 assessment in history It is really hard to find quality examples of assessment tasks at Key Stage…

Henry VIII on the money. The strange case of the one pound coin

This is not so much a full lesson as an introduction to the Break with Rome. It revolves around the…

Is this what Dickens' London looked like?

Victorian Cities

If life was so hard for families in the towns why did so many leave the countryside and move to…

Creativity in History at Key Stages 1 and 2

This best place to start with developing your thinking on creativity in history is to think in terms of: –…

What do we mean by thinking skills in history at Key Stage 2?

Whenever a new initiative is introduced the natural reaction is to assume that what we have been doing up to…

ICT in the history curriculum at Key Stage 2

When planning to use ICT in the history curriculum it is of paramount importance that the history is enhanced by…

Numeracy and history at Key Stage 2

History is full of opportunities to enhance pupils’ grasp of numeracy. We don’t have to contrive examples. We do, however,…

Opportunities for Citizenship Education in Key Stage 2 History

This section covers two main aspects: the ways of thinking that support citizenship education and the knowledge of past situations…

Designing your curriculum for history at Key Stage 2

With the current National Curriculum for history, schools have had to make some major changes to the structure as well…

Rationale for how you teach your KS2 curriculum history

When planning your history, it is really important that you spend some time establishing a strong rationale for your choice…

How well do you and your KS2 pupils know the Stone Age to Iron Age topic?

A brief set of diagnostic questions to set your Y3 pupils towards the end of the Stone Age to Iron…

Holocaust teaching and need for training for history teachers

Holocaust teaching at KS3: what we should be doing! In addition to advising that history teachers and colleagues in other…

Help Tom to fight the Great Fire

This ICT based lesson draws heavily on the superb new website created as a joint enterprise by the National Archives,…

History for pupils with EAL in Key Stages 1 and 2

Most of you will be well-versed in strategies for helping children with EAL access other subjects in the curriculum and…

S.E.N. in history at Key Stage 1 and 2

By inclusion we mean three things here: setting suitable learning challenges, responding to pupils’ diverse needs, and overcoming potential barriers…

Forward planning in history at Key Stage 1 and 2

It goes without saying that a history improvement plan must reflect the whole school approach. There is no need for…

Prioritising your work as history subject leader at Key Stage 1

When you are new to the role, your first priority must always be to establish the health of the subject…

Developing your staff at key stage 1

Nearly all teachers enjoy teaching history and will want to improve the quality of their own teaching so that children…

Monitoring in history at Key Stage 1

Almost every subject leader I know feels that they ought to be doing more monitoring, as if ordered to ‘Go…

General advice regarding progression in history at Key Stage 1

This section outlines the key indicators of progression. The other section looks at each strand in detail. We all need to…

Long term planning for history at Key Stage 1

Superficially, Key Stage1 seems the least complex history curriculum to plan because the burden of content to be covered seems…

History Teaching Smart Tasks for Key Stage 1

This section of the site look at smart tasks: short enquiry-led thinking skills activities. Unlike the outstanding lessons section, they…

Teaching interpretations in history at Key Stage 1

For many teachers of infants, interpretations is the hardest of all the ideas to get across. It is an abstract…

Enquiry in history at Key Stage 1

History is full of rich and interesting stories, and pupils love to hear them. Indeed, a good story well-told is…

Teaching Pre-1066 thematic topic

What shall we do with Area 6 pre-1066 thematic unit? Here are some questions to ask yourself. Do you look…

Primary History: Teaching From Stone Age to Iron Age

Although not widely taught before it was introduced into the Ks2 curriculum for 2014, this new area of study has…

Stop using ‘can-do’ statements to assess KS3 history

It has always concerned me that context-free can-do statements have NO PLACE in HISTORY TEACHING. How can we possibly consider…

Were medieval crimes and punishments as brutal as people think? Two smart tasks

First students work collaboratively to distil from 16 pieces of evidence provided, the ones they think give them the most…

Were Cromwell’s actions at Drogheda as brutal as we’ve been led to believe? Ketchup on the walls. SMART TASK KS3

This Y8 courtroom drama blends a study of a couple of original sources, one in facsimile form, with evidence from…

Ways of ensuring that students think harder in A-level history lessons.

Download the 20 different practical strategies brought together in one document to make sure that students make the most of…

Vikings – KQ5 – What can we learn about Viking settlement from a study of place-name endings?

Viking place name evidence A very active session in which pupils apply their knowledge of Viking place name endings to…

Vikings – KQ6 – Raiders or settlers: how should we remember the Vikings?

Differing views of the Vikings Fun concluding lesson in which pupils produce a balanced, illustrated Zig-Zag book to please a…

Primary History: Teaching Benin

When teaching this unit, you are advised to use the medium-term planner in the planning section which links the learning strategies…

Primary History: Teaching Early Islam/Baghdad c.900

All the lessons featured below flow from the detailed medium-term planner. Each has been chosen to help pupils not only…

Early Islamic civilization – KQ6 – Which of the early Islamic achievements has most effect on our lives today?

Key Question 6 consists of 2 Smart Tasks. Following a brief overview of the impact of early Islamic achievements on…

Primary History: Teaching the Maya at Key Stage 2

Containing 6 motivating key questions, designed to bring out the central historical skills and concepts related to this topic, as…

History Teaching Smart Tasks for Key Stage 2

This section of the site look at smart tasks: short enquiry-led thinking skills activities. Unlike the outstanding lessons section, they…

Teaching KS3 History: Local Study

The current history curriculum makes it mandatory to include a local history study in your KS3 history curriculum. For example:…

Teaching Thematic from pre-1066

Area 6 of the National Curriculum for history requires that you include the study of an aspect or theme in…

KS2 Quick Quiz on the Vikings

This exit task is a quick way of working out whether the key messages of your teaching about the Vikings…

What to look for in your excellent history lessons: Your starter for 12

This is not meant to be painting by numbers. You will see from the detail of the many outstanding lessons…

ICT and history at Key Stage 4

There are a number of ways in which ICT is already being used successfully in history that go far beyond…

Puzzle Corner 2: Analysing Victorian photographs: the puzzle of the Tredegar patch girls.

Beguilingly simple, but actually quite thought-provoking, this short smart task teaches pupils not to take things at face value –…

Great Fire Smart Task – What’s going on in our mystery picture?

This simple starter activity uses a large, coloured, artist’s reconstruction of Pepys burying his possessions when he knows it is…

History and literacy – Making sense of a letter from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn

Pupils are given a copy of a letter from Henry to Anne Boleyn. It appears, at first glance to be…

Assessment of interpretations of Boudicca

Below is an account of an assessment task on Boudicca , with downloadable resources, just one of many assessed tasks…

Teaching Life in Britain 1930-1945 at Key Stage 2

Inexplicably axed by Michael Gove from the curriculum, my advice is to carry on teaching this highly successful unit focusing…

Are you teaching your KS1 the truth about Guy Fawkes?

In many schools I hear teachers tell the same story about Guido Fawkes. Guy Fawkes was angry at the King…

Excellent resource on Great Fire of London for KS1

The Museum of London has a wonderful selection of teaching resources on its website including an interactive story and perhaps best of…

Numeracy in history at Key Stage 3

History’s contribution to numeracy needs to be really carefully thought out or we could waste an awful lot of valuable…

Keystage history

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