Although the Tudors are not a unit in their own right in the current National Curriculum for history, we can still continue to teach them in one of four ways:
1. We can make it the main focus for the thematic study: e.g. looking at how the role of the monarch has changed from Tudor times to today. The focus in 80% on Henry VIII and Elizabeth focusing on their portraits and what they tell us about them as rulers. The rest looks at how the monarchy is presented in the media today. Alternatively you might look at ‘voyages of exploration’ focusing heavily on the Tudors.
2. We can exploit any strong local links you might have e.g. schools within visiting distance of a Tudor palace
3. We can still teach it outside the National Curriculum. This need not mean extra time for history. We simply shave off time from the other units to make space for a truncated Tudor unit.
If you’re an academy of course you just teach it because its a great KS2 topic which has stood the test of time.
Whatever you decide, all existing outstanding lessons provide superb opportunities for excellent learning .
Make sure you have the brilliant medium term planner with you, judged outstanding by OFSTED, when you look at these lessons so you can see how well they are sequenced and how they each address a distinct and important concept that helps pupils to think historically.
As you know, the requirement to study Life in Tudor Britain was mysteriously and inexplicably removed from the Key Stage 2 curriculum in 2014. As one of the best-taught and popular of all the history topics that pupils study at junior school, the Tudors should...
This KS2 history enquiry revolves around Henry VIII’s divorce and the break with Rome, one of the best-known stories in English history. At first, Henry, this larger than life figure, seems almost to be a perfect guest on Jerry Springer. He married his...
The context of this lesson was to explore the highs and lows of Catherine of Aragon as a lead up to the Break with Rome. Pupils had already looked at the personality of Henry through his portraits. They had noticed, using the 'Police line-up'...
Pupils are given a copy of a letter from Henry to Anne Boleyn. It appears, at first glance to be impossibly hard to read - so many old-fashioned words, such an old-fashioned way of writing,...
This lesson features the lives of 4 different Tudor people as evidenced from a key document that they each have in common, namely an inventory. By studying the nature, value and amount of possessions each person had, pupils can start to draw conclusions about...
This enquiry focuses on helping children to learn about the power and authority of Queen Elizabeth and to appreciate the contrasting lifestyles of rich and poor in late Tudor England. The vehicle for doing this is to cast pupils in role as the household...
This lesson works really well because the tension you build into the waiting room activity gets all the class involved and focused. The more able pupils have a specific, more challenging role to play, working out an explanation that assuages the rage of an...
A tightly structured series of activities on the reasons why the Mary Rose mysteriously sank which incorporates:
a. A history mystery using evidence discovered in the last few years
b. Evaluation of a website
c. Writing a better website explanation with a sense of...
