Human Interest

This technology is a useful tool to help primary students make connections to past events and places. Create historical scenarios, animate events and communicate using History in Motion.

Planning historical inquiry in the primary classroom

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)

Teaching ideas:

• 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?

Teaching about convicts? Check out the array of online digital resources on this State Library NSW Pinterest board.

Teaching about convicts? Check out this wonderful range of online digital resources on the NSW State Library Pinterest board

Developed by the History Teachers' Association of Australia, this website supports primary and secondary teachers in implementing the Australian Curriculum:history. Examine the "Teaching History" section for key principles of the disciplinary teaching of history. Sample units of work for different year levels align to topics in the Australian curriculum and provide a useful planning model as well as great teaching ideas.

Lots  of content But very well set up