Keystage 1 Free Samples

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

From mime to movie. SMART TASK

This fun activity is carried out by children working on tables of six.  Half the class work on one image, the other half  on another interesting image.  Each table is given an A4 colour picture either A or B.  For...
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The Gunpowder Plot: Prove it using a gallery of images

Gunpowder plot
This skilfully differentiated lesson places pupils in the role of detectives that have to find evidence to back up statements that have been made about the Gunpowder plot.  They are given responsibility for a range of statements carefully matched to their learning needs.  They work...
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Grace Darling: setting up the enquiry KQ 1

grace darling

This is the first lesson on an enquiry into Grace Darling: what she did, and why she was famous. The kernel of the lesson is a slow reveal activity which works really well on an Interactive White Board.  The key image comes from the...

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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, National Portrait Gallery, Museum of London and London Fire Brigade Museum. It appears on the Learning Curve section of the National Archives site. The interactive...
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New theory on sinking of the Titanic

Left luggage activity on the Titanic using artefacts provided by a Southampton Museum
Those of you teaching the great KS1 topic on the sinking of the Titanic will be interested to know that the debate still goes. What we term a history mystery in the outstanding lesson, certainly is every bit a mystery. Now, 30 years of further...
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Expert Advice: Key Stage 1 – Mary Anning

Mary Anning Expert Advice
She sells sea shells: planning a topic on Mary Anning, Dinosaur hunter, using the Anholt's Stone girl, Bone girl  “Would you like to go Dinosaur hunting? Well one young girl did when she wasn’t much older than you and became famous all over the world."  The sample page...
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The Ups and Downs of Mary Anning’s life

This lesson focuses on helping pupils to move beyond simple story telling and sequencing to thinking about the effect that each event in her life had on Mary. By encouraging pupils to think in terms of happy and sad events, you will help them build...
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Florence Nightingale Lesson and sample planner

Fighting Fit. What did Florence do to improve the lives of the soldiers when she arrived in the Crimea? One example of a series of lessons for teaching Florence Nightingale as part of your KS1 history. A sample from the full planner in the medium term...
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Assessment for learning in Primary history

History assessment
Assessment for Learning is much vaunted and many faceted. If we break down what it means in its constituent parts, many of you will feel that you do most of that already, and you probably do. What the Primary Strategy is pushing is a more...
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Long term planning for history at Key Stage 1

Superficially, Key Stage1 seems the least complex history curriculum to plan because the burden of content to be covered seems manageable. Scratch beneath the short section that describes the demands of Key Stage 1 history and you'll find lurking some significant issues to be resolved....
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Thinking skills in history at Key Stage 1

Wright Brothers
There is nothing particularly radical about using a thinking skills approach to history at Key Stage 1, but there are certainly two main pitfalls that snare the unwary. The first lies in the area of metacognition, that part of the lesson where pupils think about...
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Curriculum models for KS1 history

It seems a logical extension of the advice on long-term planning of the 2014 curriculum to offer you some models of what it might look like. As you know, the devil is in the detail. With the current emphasis firmly on a more cross-curricular approach...
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What do we remember on Poppy Day / Remembrance Day?

This session revolves around a PowerPoint presentation which poses 6 significant questions, each designed to encourage pupils to think and to share their knowledge and understanding of this annual event.

Question 1

Who and what do we remember on Poppy Day? Show PowerPoint slide 2 which shows poppies...
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Smart Task: Key Stage 1

Seaside Smart Task

Key Stage 1 assessment in history

It is really hard to find quality examples of assessment tasks at Key Stage 1 that actually work in the classroom with children of all abilities, especially the youngest children.  New to the site is one such task...

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