Victorian Britain Lessons
KS2 Life in Victorian times outstanding lessons
Although not mandatory I the national Curriculum at the moment there is no reason why you can’t choose to study this highly popular KS2 topic.
- 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.
- Make it the focus of your thematic study e.g. development of the railways for example
- 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 and 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.
Planner, assessment task and knowledge organiser
| All Victorian Britain Key Questions | Historical focus |
|---|---|
| KQ1 – What were the main changes that took place during this time? | Change and significance |
| KQ2 – Children working in Victorian factories: was it as bad as they tell us? | Evidence and interpretations |
| KQ3 – If life was so hard in the towns, why did so many people leave the countryside and move there? | Causation and migration |
| KQ3a – What the Dickens was life like in Victorian cities? | Urban life and evidence |
| KQ4 – Victorian railways: who were the winners and losers? | Consequences and change |
| KQ5a – What was it like going to school in Victorian times? | Photographic evidence and everyday life |
| KQ5c – Climbing boys enquiry | Childhood and working conditions |
| KQ6 – The Victorian Era: Dark Age or Golden Age? | Interpretation and evaluation |
Victorian Britain – KQ1 – What were the main changes that took place during this time?
Motivating introductory lessons which, from the outset, challenges pupils to compare two images of the same place from the start and end of Victoria’s reign, before moving on to look…
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Victorian Britain – KQ2 – 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…
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Victorian Britain – KQ3 – 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…
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Victorian Britain – KQ3a – 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…
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Victorian Britain – KQ4 – 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…
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Victorian Britain – KQ5a – 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,…
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Victorian Britain – KQ5b – Victorian poor and the workhouse; what does Martha’s story tell us?
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…
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Victorian Britain – KQ5c – 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…
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Victorian Britain – KQ6 – 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…
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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 only is featured below. Stages 2 and 4 are suggestions using your own local…
Read MoreWritten by Neil Thompson
All content on Keystage history is written and quality assured by Neil Thompson, a former history teacher, county history adviser and Ofsted inspector with more than 30 years’ experience in history education.