Human Interest

Planning historical inquiry in the primary classroom

To help young children develop an understanding of the past, teachers can design a historical inquiry around topics that are relevant to their students (e.g. school, family, toys)

Teaching ideas:

• Use an inquiry approach and pose questions to stimulate prior knowledge and ideas e.g. What was school like in the olden days?
• Use primary sources e.g. Watch original film footage or observe historical images or documents
• Decode visual sources- e.g. children can take turns to describe what they can see in a picture. Ask students to identify particular aspects, label different features, write a caption
• Ask questions to give an overview of the image- what people can you see? where are they? what are they doing? who do you think they are? why? Are there any letters, words, numbers?
• Ask questions to elicit details about the visual source such as- what are they wearing? what are they holding? what sorts of clothes are they wearing? what sorts of hairstyles? what sorts of foods/games/classrooms? What are they doing in the picture? What does the picture tell us about women, race, children, age etc;
• Analyse primary sources- e.g. compare similarities and differences with school today. Imagine what school will be like in the future.
• Provide graphic organisers which allow students to organise their knowledge and ideas. E.g. 'T Chart" (before and now), Venn Diagram (similarities and differences).
• Address historical concepts e.g. change and continuity, cause and effect, chronology.
• Teach and use different types of historical language (e.g. language of historical time- 1940s, decade, long ago, in the olden days OR the language of historical processes such as similarity, difference).
• Talk about historians use primary sources to find out about the past
• Construct an historical narrative about what school was like in the past
• Think about what school will be like in the future

For further reading:

Cooper, H.(2002). History in the early years.

Husbands, C. (1996). What is history teaching?