5 Ways to Bring History Alive in your Classroom
Class visits and museum trips on hold?
Then it’s more important than ever to have the best resources to help your pupils learn history skills and knowledge in a fun and accessible way.
All teachers know that children need a little help to visualise and imagine a life different from their own. In fact, we all do! The right resources can aid in understanding about how we live now, how things have changed over time and how past events have shaped the world today.
KCS’s history catalogue pages are packed with ideas to help your history lessons reach every child. Our visuals, artefacts, learning aids and games will make history spring to life in your classroom.
1. Artefacts
A collection of objects an archaeologist might have discovered!
Nothing beats seeing and touching to create interest, curiosity, questioning and imagination. Inspire and get those thinking skills going with our brilliant replica artefact collections. Packs also include teachers’ notes and guide, posters, desktop timeline and lesson ideas with templates.
Curriculum in Brief:
- … knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources…
- … make connections, differences and similarities…
Replica artefact collections:
Stone age to Iron age, Mayan, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Roman, Anglo Saxon, Vikings, memorabilia from Suffragettes and WWII, and The Cold War.
Any more?
Make it fun by hiding artefacts in sand or earth. Write a story behind the object. Can’t get outside? Then imagine the objects were found in an ancient time capsule waiting for the year 2020 to be opened.
What questions do you have? What does it tell you about the people who used these things?
2. Sense of Time
Our Timeline Class Packs can really help put history in order!
Many children, even older ones, don’t have a fully developed sense of their place in time. When we’re teaching, it’s sometimes easy to forget that pupils need an aid to work out where both recent and historic events fit into history.
If we’re talking centuries and millennia, it’s even harder to grasp! Seen visually and in order, however, really helps children’s brains begin to sort it out.
Curriculum in Brief:
- KS1 … know where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework…
- KS2 … continue to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding…
- KS3: … extend and deepen their chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, so that it provides a well-informed context for wider learning…
Any More?
Pupils can make a timeline of their lives, or the lives of older family members. You could cover up parts of a timeline and transform trying to remember into a memory game or quiz.
3. Atmosphere
History can be ‘felt’ as well as learned!
From KS1 to KS4, our large waterproof backdrops provide a great setting for your history topic. Indoors, outdoors, playmat or on the wall – backdrops are brilliant at creating a sense of place and atmosphere. Choose from Stonehenge, Sphinx with Pyramid, The Acropolis and Roman Baths.
Curriculum in Brief:
- … diversity, similarities and differences…
- … inspire curiosity to know more about the past…
Any more?
Use as a stage for drama activities and really bring history alive. Also fabulous for story starters or inspiration for art.
4. Enquiry
Critical thinking and judgement are vital history skills – but where do you start?
Curriculum in Brief:
- …teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement…
- …understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources…
5. Thinking Cards
A useful resource designed to develop an enquiring approach and also to develop observational and descriptive skills. Each pack contains 20 A5 cards featuring a photograph on one side, and 5 questions or activity suggestions on the other.
Being a history detective will be child’s play!
Display and Poster Packs
These spot-on visuals can be used for a lesson or as part of an enquiry task. Displayed around the classroom, pupils can enjoy in their own time or search for evidence under directed research.
Colourful and atmospheric, all learners will love the images and atmosphere created by the collection. A simple but effective way to bring history alive and give importance to the subject.
6. History Games
Learning through play is fun and effective!
Research has shown that games really do improve learning.
This is because they are motivating, engaging, visually stimulating and include problem-solving. Repetition also strengthens memory. Packed with pictures, our history board games and snap will support every history topic.
Any More?
Use as part of a round-robin of activities. Encourage children to investigate games children used to play in history… and get them to make up some topic games of their own.
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Don’t Forget the teacher…
Teachers are the greatest resource of all!
By considering artefacts, sense of time, atmosphere, enquiry and history games in your lesson planning, your knowledge, confidence and enthusiasm for your history topic could also increase – inspiring your pupils to learn better, too.