The Great Fire of London – Key Stage 1

Coming end of next month ( Feb 2021) : Brand new GREAT FIRE Enquiry lessons
Our brand-new Outstanding Medium term planner on the Great Fire of London comes with a clear rationale and 6 enquiry-led fully resourced lessons. The planner is available to subscribers from Monday 11 January, with all lessons available on the site next months. Drafts may be available to subscribers from 18 January. The way to access these is to email your request using the Contact Us form. We will happily release pre-production material on request and let you know when all resources are live at the end of February.
The new look at a very familiar topic is a completely new revamp of the existing planner plus completely new enquiries which set it apart from the plethora of worksheets that have flooded the market. The enquiries are as follows:
Key Question I: How can we find out how the Fire started? You are the detectives
Pupils work in groups as detectives using a dossier of carefully chosen well pitched clues such as a map showing spread of the fire , a newspaper headline from the time, a range of pictures of the bakers oven, the sparks, where the wood was kept and a simplified diary from a contemporary Edward Harley. When they have solve the puzzle they compare their theory with that given in the brand-new Museum of London 90second video
Key Question 2: looks at how the fire spread and how we know and involves story-telling, sequencing, mime and a great activity called Prove It!
Key Question 3: explores why the fire burned down so many more houses than other fires at the time, using Post-it challenge and evaluate the text and film before pupils come up with their own explanatory plaque to go on the Monument.
Key Question4: is completely new and looks at whether enough was done to stop the fire. Pupils have to consider who should take most of the blame using a range of suspects.
Key Question 5: focuses more on the empathetic side of history in which pupils have to consider the plight of 75,000 displaced citizens suddenly without a home. How did they get by? It is really important that we don’t forget this human side of the event.
Key Question 6: is based largely on the existing lesson and put pupils in the role as designers in competition with Wren and Evelyn and others to design a new face f London which would not fall victim to another catastrophic fire.