Teaching Mary Seacole at KS1

In the past we have taught Florence and Mary Seacole together with perhaps too little emphasis on Mary. To restore the balance and to focus more on diversity, we have created a separate topic on Mary, with her own set of key enquiry questions. The study culminates in a comparison of who better deserves a statue outside St.Thomas
Hospital.

As well as dignifying the role of black females in the past, and taking them out of the shadows of history, this topic offers excellent opportunities to explore the changing attitudes to race, then and now.

Central to the topic is a focus on interpretations. Even young children should be able to enter the debate about Mary’s significance. How should we best remember her?

Teaching Mary Seacole to Key Stage 1

Mary Seacole's inclusion might be regarded by some as tokenism. That would be unfair. The site also features work on Rosa Parks and others. The reason Mary is included is mainly because it helps children to understand that there are different interpretations of the past...

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Mary Seacole – KQ1 – How can we work out why Mary Seacole is famous?

This session focuses on working out WHY Mary Seacole is commemorated today 200 years after she was born, and looks at the different ways in which she is remembered. The debate about whether she, or Florence Nightingale , better deserves a statue outside St.Thomas’ hospital...

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Mary Seacole – KQ2 – What were the most important events in Mary’s life?

Pupils watch a short film to establish the outlines of the story and then have to sequence a differentiated set of images of the key events of her life. They finish by discussing which events were the most significant in Mary’s life and identifying turning...

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Mary Seacole – KQ3 – What was Mary’s greatest achievement and how do we know?

The focus here is mainly on the evidence for Mary’s achievement. This is important as she was a more-or-less forgotten figure for 200 years. So how do we know that claims about Mary’s life are true? The skill of finding evidence to back up statements...

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Mary Seacole – KQ4 – How did life change for Mary after the Crimean war?

Pupils create a fortunes graph showing the highs and lows of Mary’s life after the Crimea, identify a key turning point in her fortunes, and then consider ways in which Mary was helped when she fell on hard times.

Objectives

- Pupils are able to sequence events...

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Mary Seacole – KQ5 – What made Mary so special?

A short session aimed at generating adjectives to capture the special qualities that Mary had and to provide examples of where she exhibited those characteristics.

Learning objectives

- Pupils can list at least 3 adjectives to describe her distinctive character - Pupils understand that Mary was exceptionally kind...

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Mary Seacole – KQ6 – Why doesn’t everyone agree that Mary deserves her statue at St.Thomas’ hospital?

This lesson places pupils in the role of Mantle of the Expert. A new monument to Mary Seacole was erected outside St Thomas Hospital in 2016 . But there have been complaints. Surely it was Florence who was associated with St Thomas’ hospital , not...

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Mary Seacole – How should we remember her?

This lesson is the second featuring Mary Seacole.  In the first her role was compared with Florence Nightingale's. The focus now shifts to asking two key questions: which was Mary Seacole's greatest achievement ; why is she not remembered as well as Florence?

Learning objectives

• children...

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