Primary History: Teaching Victorian Britain Key Stage 2

The following Key Stage 2 history lessons have all been judged to be outstanding according to OFSTED criteria. There is a wide variety of teaching and learning activities as well as a rich array of teaching resources including PowerPoint® presentations. New lessons on Victorian Britain will be regularly added to meet the demands of the changing primary curriculum.

>>PLEASE NOTE Although the current government has abandoned the planned changes of the Rose Review and is probably going to back a narrower content-led curriculum favoured by Gove, the advice you will find here still holds good.  The section Teaching Victorian Britain  for 2011, with my take on what teaching this topic might still look like in the future can be found below with its suggestions for teaching the topic in a cross-curricular context.
 

Outstanding Lessons

• ADDED JANUARY 2011 Victorian Railways; winners and losers. A thinking skills activity leading to a role play.  Pupils work in groups to predict what people's reactions would be and then act out an enquiry held by a local town.
• ADDED SEPTEMBER 2010 Children working in Victorian factories: was it as bad as they tell us?  An exciting role play in which pupils give evidence about life for children in Victorian factories. A fun post-it challenge consolidates the key points which are then explored in terms of reliability of the statements. Something for everyone allowing level 2 and level 5 thinking, demonstrated in the differentiated plenary.
• What the Dickens was life like in the cities? Creative tension between written text and artist's etching.
• If life was so hard for families in the towns why did so many leave the countryside?
• Golden Age or Dark Age? The achievements of the Victorians on a plate!
• How useful is the film Oliver in helping us to understand Victorian Britain?
  

Smart Task

• ADDED OCTOBER 2010 Can we use a Victorian census to solve the mystery of the famous family in the photo?   Pupils use a census to work out who the people in the mystery photograph are, the first stage of working on more complex census data later.  All they have to go on is a 1891 census and 3 dying words of the only surviving relative!
• Going to school in Victorian times: can pupils write a paragraph for a KS1 text book using photographs alone?

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Teaching Victorian Britain to Key Stage 2 up to 2011
 

Update 4.1.10 Full Primary History Planner for teaching Life in Victorian Britain with key questions and objectives, and suggestions for teaching strategies and written products available to members in KS2 medium term planning section

This is such a vast history topic that it is easy to lose your way and attempt a teaching programme that is more akin to Key Stage 3.  The stated focus from the National Curriculum clearly centres on conditions in industrial towns and changes, particularly in transport.  It is the effects of industrial change rather than its causes that should be our main preoccupation. 

It will come as no surprise therefore to find quite a few lessons on urban life.  The Dickens of a City is a fantastic example of using words and pictures to create a tension that promotes the right conditions for deep learning.  The history mystery on why Wilf and his family left the countryside for the town is a brilliant vehicle for thinking skills as well as drama.

As you approach the end of the topic it is worth offering pupils the chance to gain an evaluative overview of the whole period.  That is exactly what 'Victorian Britain Dark Age or Golden Age?' attempts to do.

For those of you keen to use video material as a source for studying the period, the lesson 'What would Oliver be thinking?' will give you the chance to use film clips through your laptop, thanks to the British Film institute.

For those of you keen to employ role-play then the reconstruction of  evidence given before a parliamentary commission investigating factory conditions will be ideal. Not only does it enable pupils to hear both sides of the arguments, it also introduces them to the need to evaluate the evidence carefully. Before long your year 5/6 pupils will be talking about exaggeration and vested interest!

It would be wrong not to include a lesson using ICT especially now that we have good access to census material digitally. You will probably want to use material more local to you, but the lesson here gives you the inspiration to actually do it.

Resources

If you are looking for on-line material, a good starting point might be the 24 hour Museum site. If you are keen to use artefacts, but cannot obtain them , the next best alternative might be to try Birmingham Museums Service's lost luggage activity. Pupils are shown a trunk left at a railway station. By systematically working through its contents of 23 items, pupils should be able to establish the true identity of the trunk's owner. Although there are obviously only photos of objects, not the artefacts themselves, the problem-solving nature of the activity is still strong.

The Virtual Victorians is a great resource. Save it as a favourite. I have given you a couple of screenshots  - side gallery - to show the breadth of what it covers.

Teaching KS2 Victorian Britain for the proposed new Primary curriculum in 2011

This planning has been designed with the new 2011 primary curriculum in mind. Hunt high and low and you won’t find the word Victorians in the new 2011 curriculum, but there are some unambiguous references.  Where you will find them is in the later part of Key Stage 2, years 5 and 6 in one of three possible guises.  This could be EITHER as:
a. A study in depth of a very popular and easy-to-resource topic
OR b. As a key period of history that was significant to the locality and for which there is still considerable evidence within the built environment in the form of houses, schools etc.

It would seem sensible to study a number of aspects of Victorian Britain in some detail. Clearly you will need to fulfill the new curriculum requirements of section L13 to look at the effects of economic and technological change. Victorian Britain is a great place to bring these ideas into sharp focus. Instead of a trudge through technology through time (is this really what the curriculum designers want?) you might choose to look at several key turning points to show change and continuity. For this reason transport is a good example, though not the only one. Changes in transport in the last 200 years followed a long period of stagnation. Roads built in medieval times followed patterns familiar to the Romans and very little changed until the 18thcentury.

Rationale

The rationale for the choice of coverage here, focuses on the first and the second of the options shown above, i.e. a study of Victorian Britain that links very closely to the requirement that children look at economic, technological and scientific change. This period is the best there is for looking at concepts of change. I would also want to make the most of the development of historical skills in this section. If we look at the 2001 requirements we can see lots of opportunities. These are picked up and turned into learning objectives and tightly, yet creative , focused classroom activities.

a. Children undertake investigations and enquiries, using various methods. They can carry out an enquiry using the census returns from 1851 to 1891. Ask pupils to investigate the nature of the servants who can be found in many houses. How old are they, where did they come from? Have they travelled further to get a job in 1891 than in 1851? Can we work out why? Great opportunity to use ICT .

b. Compare, interpret and analyse different types of evidence from a range of sources. Here pupils look at different testimonies when enquiring into conditions in Victorian mills.

c. Present and communicate findings in a range of ways and develop arguments and explanations using appropriate specialist vocabulary and techniques. Pupils can be part of a TV crew interviewing people about the effects of the railways on their life and leisure. They must produce a balanced piece ‘to camera’ lasting just 2 minutes.

d. Consider, respond to and debate alternative viewpoints, in order to take informed and responsible action. Pupils have responsibility for producing a new set of displays on Victorian Britain in the local museum. They can include just 3 panels of information, 5 pictures, and 4 objects. Which will they be? Each group produces their own and then they evaluate each others.

Planning around 7 key questions, at a glance

1. What do you think were the most important changes to take place during this period? (overview)
2. A time of inventors. Who should the Dragon’s Den investors put most money on? (Note link to economic and technological change.)
3. What was life really like for children in the cotton mills? Role play of a parliamentary commission. (Note the contribution to rights and responsibilities agenda and health and safety.)
4. If life was so hard for people living in the factory towns, why then did so many people move there? To help deepen pupils with their understanding of movement and settlement of people which they began with M12 you could look at the great influx of people to industrial towns. The best way of doing this is to ask pupils to work out what might, at first sight, seem like a historical mystery. This is featured as an outstanding lesson (on the free samples part of the site as well as the subscribers area), which includes thinking skills cards, the resource you need to make the activity work really effectively. The focus is as much on HOW pupils think through the problem, the meta-cognitive bit, as it is about coming up with right answer
5. Was the coming of the railways a mixed blessing? Good opportunity for speaking and listening as pupils make a TV programme interviewing different 19th century characters (pupils in role) for their views. This is central to the primary curriculum aims for history which talks about social economic and technological change over time.
6. What can we work out about the life of young servants by using our local census returns? OR what can we work out about life in Victorian times from films and novels. There are two aspects to this study;
a. The first aspect looks at change through time. Using the census material from 1861,1871, 1881 ,1891 and 1901, pupils look at significant change in their town/village.
b. The second looks at one aspect in more detail. Within the context of a study of school, take the local census for 1881 and ask children to work out how old children were before they went to school and how old they were when they left. This is interesting because there is a temptation for children to look at the first scholar and think that tells them the answer. What they need to do is to cross-reference. As soon as a pattern emerges they can suggest their hypothesis. You could ask children to work on different villages to see if they all agree.
c. You could, of course look at family size, nature of occupations and movement into the area. The 1891 census might be better for this purpose.

7 “Should we remember Victorian times as a Golden Age of tremendous change for the better, or a Dark Age of human suffering”. This is the last, and probably the most important question. It requires pupils to make an overall judgement and stops them sliding into easy generalisations. Preparatory work engages children in designing a commemorative plate for Victoria’s diamond jubilee on which they paint the glorious achievement. By contrast they then create a diary of a mill worker who later in life learned to read and has written down his recollections. It also draws on the role play of factory conditions.

The Lesson Objectives that should be taught across this topic on Victorian Britain

1. Pupils gain an overview of the topic.
They develop criteria for thinking about significance.
2. Pupils are able to argue their case using the most significant points.
They can distinguish between the important and the trivial detail.
They can make an effective presentation persuasively.
They show a good sense of period and ability to use sources as evidence.
3. Pupils grasp that sometimes primary sources can give an exaggerated view.
They understand that people with a ‘vested interest’ may not always tell the complete truth.
4. Pupils can argue their case, based on evidence.
They can listen and react to alternative views and realise that there is likely to be a diversity of reaction to most issues in history.
5. Pupils learn to manipulate data effectively using a simple database
They are able to spot patterns when data is presented graphically and see the need to explain them.
They can offer valid reasons when predicting reasons for change.
6. Pupils grasp that there is not just one fixed view of the past.
They develop the ability understand why we have different views of the past. It partly depends on what aspect you study.

The types of key learning activities that could be used in this topic.

1. Comparison of 3 artists’ impressions of the same place at 3 moments in time from 1790 to 1890. Pupils spot the changes but label just the 5 they think are the most significant. See SMART task available to subscribers only.
2. Pupils compare the qualities of different inventors of the time and practise their skills of selection and advocacy in the Dragon’s Den, complete with all the drama and music from the TV show.
3. Pupils study various pieces of testimony presented before the Parliamentary Commissioners investigating conditions for children in early 19th factories
4. Having studied and manipulated data on a digital database pupils generate questions to ask about the life of servants of scholars and then use research e.g. a Webquest to find the answers.
5. Pupils work collaboratively on a museum display, carefully getting the balance of good and bad sides of Victorian Britain and also making some objects to feature with their captions. Pupils are encouraged to use local material wherever possible.
Many more, of course, feature in the outstanding lessons section where they are fully resourced.

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