We often talk to children about the benefits that brought so many people into industrial towns in the first half of the nineteenth century. But we probably need to stress more, as a recent study has shown, that the rural peasants often had a better...
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Victorian Britain
KS2 Life in Victorian times outstanding lessons
Teaching the Victorians under the new 2014 history curriculum. Incredibly Gove has deemed that Life in Victorian times should not be a compulsory part of the KS2 history curriculum. So we need to find imaginative ways round this. Here are three to consider:
1 Make it the focus of your local history study. Build up some census return data on a database and make it a vehicle for some great ICT work, asking and answering questions and raising and testing hypotheses.
2. Make it the focus of your thematic study e.g. development of the railways for example
3. Carry on teaching it outside the National Curriculum. This does not mean extra time for history. You gain time by shaving a little off the other units.
There is just so much good planning, teaching and resourcing of the Victorians going on in schools today that we can’t throw it all out on a Gove’s whim. The outstanding lessons below continue to prove what can be done with this exciting topic.
If life was so hard for families in the towns why did so many leave the countryside and move to the towns in Victorian times? – a history mystery
Starting a lesson with an apparent contradiction is a good way of engaging pupils interest. This 'history mystery' makes excellent use of pupils' thinking skills, enabling them to make their own meaning using information cards which they use to create different patterns of thought....
What the Dickens was life like in the Victorian cities?
This lesson makes extremely good use of a technique called creative tension. Pupils listen, with their eyes closed, to a spoken description which they then have to visualise in their heads. When they open their eyes they discuss what they saw in their mind's...
Children working in Victorian factories: was it as bad as they tell us?
This lesson is designed for Y5/6 pupils who already have a little knowledge of industrial change but have not yet studied cotton mills. Although the main part of the lesson is devoted to a playlet in which pupils act out real testimony about children’s...
Victorian railways: winners and losers. A thinking skills activity leading to a role play
This active, thinking skills lesson asks pupils to consider the likely effect of the coming of the railways on different groups in society before going on to take part in a role play in which villagers have to debate whether they should support or...
What can we discover about Victorian workhouses from clips of the film Oliver?
This lesson was originally taught by Kathryn Price at Crescent Primary in Eastleigh, Hampshire. The Year 4 children had just started their topic of the Victorians and this activity was carried out within the first two weeks of term. As this lesson fell so early...
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Going to school in Victorian times: can pupils write a paragraph for a KS1 textbook using photographs alone? SMART TASK Y3-5
This activity puts pupils in the role as researchers for a new book on Victorian schools. They have been commissioned to write a book for key Stage 1 pupils. Therefore, it needs to be short and interesting but also accurate. They must show evidence...
Using a Victorian census to discover what life was like 100 years ago SMART TASK
There are 4 separate ways of approaching this topic, each becoming increasingly more ambitious. Stage 1 onky is featured below. Stages 2 and 4 are suggestions using your own local resources. There are no resources for these.
Stage 1: Featured here, for younger children needing...Climbing boys enquiry SMART TASK
This enquiry falls into five parts:
A selection of four related enquiry tasks which encourage pupils to explore and then evaluate evidence about the life of a climbing boy. The evaluative task is particularly suitable for the gifted and talented working at level 5...
The Victorian Era: Dark Age or Golden Age?
This is the concluding lesson on the Victorians. It starts with a plate and a poster commemorating the achievements of Victorian Britain to set it in an international context. Pupils are then invited to weigh up the bad aspects of the reign before arriving...
