To help young children develop an understanding of the past, teachers can design a historical inquiry around topics that are relevant to their students (e.g. school, family, toys)
|
Scooped by
Maree Whiteley
onto Primary History for Australian Classrooms April 1, 2015 6:59 AM
|
Great teaching ideas via Kate Smyth:
Use an inquiry approach and pose questions to stimulate prior knowledge and ideas e.g. What was school like in the olden days?
Use primary sources e.g. Watch original film footage or observe historical images or documents
Decode visual sources- e.g. children can take turns to describe what they can see in a picture.
Ask students to identify particular aspects, label different features, write a caption
Ask questions to give an overview of the image- what people can you see? where are they? what are they doing? who do you think they are? why? Are there any letters, words, numbers?
Ask questions to elicit details about the visual source such as- what are they wearing? what are they holding? what sorts of clothes are they wearing? what sorts of hairstyles? what sorts of foods/games/classrooms? What are they doing in the picture? What does the picture tell us about women, race, children, age etc;
Analyse primary sources- e.g. compare similarities and differences with school today. Imagine what school will be like in the future.
Provide graphic organisers which allow students to organise their knowledge and ideas. E.g. 'T Chart" (before and now), Venn Diagram (similarities and differences).Address historical concepts e.g. change and continuity, cause and effect, chronology.
Teach and use different types of historical language (e.g. language of historical time- 1940s, decade, long ago, in the olden days OR the language of historical processes such as similarity, difference).
Talk about historians use primary sources to find out about the past
Construct an historical narrative about what school was like in the past
Think about what school will be like in the future
For further reading:
Cooper, H.(2002). History in the early years.
Husbands, C. (1996). What is history teaching?