BIg picture of the past

1. Meanwhile, elsewhere

This device is central for drawing pupils’ attention to what was happening elsewhere at the time. In a recent book about the Maya pupils, who were cast as time travellers, were able to say that what they saw would have been happening at the same time as Alfred was fighting the Danes, something they had studied 2 terms before.

Example question: When Stone-age Britons were hauling stones to make Stonehenge what were Egyptians doing?

2. When would you rather live?

Here pupils are encouraged to compare living in one period with another, sometimes a different country. This works well when considering ways of life and characteristic features including freedoms or religion. This involves going beyond what some schools ask in terms of the Stone Age, Bronze Age or Iron Age to a more sweeping look at the past, say comparing Tudor with Victorian times. Obviously we would ensure that we addressed the key question of who you were. What was your status and perspective?

3. How different?

Looking for similarities and differences, comparisons and contrasts is central to our history teaching from the start of KS1. So lets make sure we make the comparisons more complex as pupils move through the school. Ask Y5 pupils how different the role of women was in Ancient Greece with another periods the pupils would have studied?

Another example might be when studying Mayan religious practices why not ask pupils to recall what they have learned about Ancient Egyptian beliefs, perhaps by focussing on the pyramids. When were they built? Who built them? How were they built? What were they used for? Then let pupils explore Mayan ‘pyramids’. What did they have in common? How did they differ? For example most Mayan ‘pyramids’ were not used as tombs but as temples for human sacrifice. You could also look at writing in the same way. How did their writing compare? Which is easier to read?

4. How long?

Often pupils lose sight of the woods for the trees. Getting them to look at relative lengths of time opens up broader thinking. Go beyond just a big timeline to asking pupils to think about how the duration of the Roman occupation in Britain compared, say, with the period of Viking rule or even the Tudor / Victorian period. Showing this visually in terms of lengths of pieces of coloured card or shade a section on a timeline are useful ways to start.

5. Time Traveller

Encourage pupils to return to a period already studied and ask how different life was then compared to their present topic in terms of the obvious aspects such as travel, houses, jobs etc.

6. Anachronism

One really fun way of establishing links and contrasts over time are anachronism pictures. The KS1 planner on Castles has a great example of the interior of the castle bedecked with things that would not have been there in medieval times. Fine, so spot these by all means but more importantly think about when they WERE introduced into this country. This forces pupils to range over time, maybe rather randomly at first but the more they practise the better they become at it. Other KS2 examples on the site include Egyptian and Victorian times. TheY6 thematic study on Keeping healthy through time looks at an anachronistic image from 1800. Pupils have to work out what would have been known and used and what had still not been invented, or even known about, at that time.

7. West is best?

Pupils are shown carefully chosen images from 4 periods including the one they are studying. They have to place them in chronological order in terms of how ADVANCED the society looks. Without necessarily knowing anything about some of the periods they just use their clues from the images to make an educated guess. When the dates of the images are revealed to them they are amazed that the more advanced societies were not in Europe but in Africa or Asia, thereby acting as a useful countermeasure to any cultural chauvinism pupils might be harbouring. In the 10^th century Baghdad was the largest city in the world, the epicentre of intellectual life. What about comparing bronze objects from the Shang dynasty with Benin and the Bronze Age in Britain?

8. Linked in

Who would have people living in one time have connected with from the wider world? E.g. The Islamic civilization would have had an intricate network of trade links stretching all the way to those extreme corners of the Viking empire.

9. Active timelines

Read more about this in the section on chronology but the key point to make here is that pupils learn much better if they are given the job of sequencing period cards into a time line for themselves rather than just looking at one they have been given, no matter how appealing. Short fun tasks such as ‘which period is missing’ and ‘which are in the wrong order’ serve pupils well in terms of them gaining familiarity and confidence with the jigsaw of periods of the past.

10. Spectrum

Pupils are given statements about the Big Picture to which they have to react. They ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘disagree’ or ‘not sure’. This really makes pupils think about the rest of the world not just the period they are studying. Examples might include.