Teaching the Victorians under the current history curriculum. Incredibly Gove 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.
PLEASE NOTE: Because this not a compulsory unit we have not aligned the lessons as closely with the planning so please bear this in mind. Not everything on the planner will have a lesson or a smart task.
NB This is an additional lesson that does not appear on the planner.
This topic couldn’t be more relevant to today. We frequently hear it said that the poor are always with us: so are the problems of... 
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
