Key stage 1 History Smart Tasks | Keystage History

‘Smart tasks’ are fully-resourced learning activities that exemplify many of the features we would expect to see in outstanding history lessons. Often they are parts of lessons that fired pupils’ imagination, enthralled them, or simply acted as an effective diagnostic task. Many will be in the form of stimulating starters. All will serve the primary function of stimulating an even better idea when you incorporate and adapt them into a lesson of your own design.

mary seacole

Mary Seacole – KQ6 – Why doesn’t everyone agree that Mary deserves her statue at St. Thomas’ hospital?

This lesson places pupils in the role of Mantle of the Expert. A new monument to Mary Seacole was erected…

Going to the seaside – KQ2 – What did people do at the seaside 100 years ago?

From mime to movie. SMART TASK This fun activity is carried out by children working on tables of six. Half…

florence nightingale statue

Smart task Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole: Who said it? / Who am I?

This simple task encourages children to spot the differences between Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. With a large A4 image…

Great new activity on Florence Nightingale- Dear Producer

Great new activity on Florence Nightingale- Dear Producer

One of the great challenges of teaching KS1 history is to avoid the pitfall of turning history into just stories…

Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole SMART TASK

Who said it? / Who am I? This simple task encourages children to spot the differences between Florence Nightingale and…

Illustration of children with guy 1960s

Bonfire Night when Granny was a girl: Smart Task

These activities have been designed for the current curriculum, covering the past within living memory and commemorative events. The three…

Help Tom to fight the Great Fire. Smart Task

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

Y1 explore the contents of the mystery bag

What’s in the bag and who does it belong to? Great Fire Smart Task

An object-based problem-solving approach to learning about life during the Great Fire This Smart Task is just part of a…

Seaside Smart Task

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…

Teaching Gunpowder Plot

The Gunpowder Plot: Prove it using a gallery of images

The downloadable PowerPoint provides all the images needed to set up a gallery for a lesson that places pupils in…

mystery photo

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…