History

Here you will find some useful information, links & resources that parents/carers can use at home, if your child is absent from school, wants to access extra work or it is a holiday period.

Curriculum Overviews

Knowledge Organisers

You can find Knowledge Organisers inside children’s planners, which detail the key facts, vocabulary and events in the topic they are learning.

Ways to use a Knowledge Organiser at home

Self-testing with the Knowledge Organiser

The Knowledge Organisers are designed to help students learn a wide range of knowledge. To get the most out of the Knowledge Organiser, sections should be learnt and then self-tested. Here are some tips on how students can successfully self-test. Work should always checked and corrected by the children themselves.

 

Read, cover, write, check, correct

• Read the key word and definition three times over with the intention of memorising them. Only do one keyword at a time.
• When you think you have memorised it, cover the page so you can no longer see the definitions.
• Write keyword and definition in your work book from memory.
• Uncover the definitions to check how close you were to the definition.
• Use a different colour pen to correct your work, including spellings.

This technique can also be used to recreate and label diagrams.

Mind Mapping

Mind Mapping is a process that maps out your thoughts using keywords that trigger associations in the brain to spark further ideas. Children can create mind maps using the knowledge on their knowledge organiser, enabling them to draw on the information and visualise it in a different way. Once you have made your map, you can cover it and test yourself on different strands.

Example mind map:

 

Clock Learning

For this technique you draw a basic clock.

Take a subject or topic and break it down into 12 subcategories. Make notes in each chunk of the clock. Revise each slot for 5 minutes. Turn the clock over and then try to write out as much information as you can from one of the segments, e.g. All the information in the 2-3pm segment.

Flash Cards

To make your own, take some card and cut into rectangles/use ready-made revision cards. Write the keyword or question on one side and the definition or answer on the other. Use diagrams, mnemonics, or pictures to help you remember the answer. Then go through your cards looking at one side and seeing if you can remember the keyword/definition on the other side.

Mnemonics

Make up a sentence where each word starts with the same letter as the words you need to remember.

 Resources

Horrible Histories - A collection of comical video clips making History topics fun and often relatable. There are also a series of Horrible History books available.

BBC Bitesize - BBC Bitesize is home to key information, games and video clips on a range of topics.

 

The School Run - A website which provides useful research material.

 

Nat Geo Kids - Access to child-friendly articles on a range of global issues, a range of quizzes, and lots of key historical facts.

 

History for Kids - Games, videos & worksheets on a free online history network.

 

DK Findout - Lots of interesting segments about many subjects including history.

Hands On History - A guide to historical research.

History Activity - Viking Ship - Build your own Viking ship and learn about the Vikings while you are doing it.

History Idea - Choose a period in history to research, create a fact file, and timeline of key events, diary entry for a person living at this time based on your research. See resource guide to researching history.

Write questions based on your research with the answers to quiz your friends and family.

History Activity - Coat of Arms - Template so you can design your own Coat of Arms or maybe research into whether your family already has one.

History Activity - Roman Villa - Create your own Roman Villa.

History Activity - Union Jack - Paint by number for the youngest children. Colour your own Union Jack.

History Activity - Royal Family Tree - Try to match the correct Royal to their spaces in the family tree.

History Idea - Try to map out your own family tree. This could be extended to further research into ancestry, history of family names, interview a family member about their childhood memories. Design a coat of arms for your family based on research.

History Activity - Significant Individuals - Template for children to fill out when researching a significant individual.

History Activity - Biography - Another template to use as a starting point when researching a historical figure.

History Idea - Research a famous person either from the past or present day. Use your research to write a fact file or biography – see resource template. Write a diary entry for this person – ‘A day in the life of…’ Write a letter to this person. Write questions that you would like to ask them.