Writing History 7-11

Historical writing in different genres

Hilary Cooper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415842594
• eBook ISBN: 9781317664505
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Writing History 7-11 supports students and primary teachers helping them to explore ways in which activities involving the talk that underpins historical enquiry can be developed into reading and exciting, extended, reflective writing.

The step that teachers and pupils take from 'talk for learning' to 'talk for writing' is a vital one. In this book the authors argue that all aspects of historical enquiry leading to writing involve discussion and dialogue which permeate every aspect of 'doing history'. From this perspective they set out a theoretical framework for understanding the role of talk and reading in developing pupils' critical thinking and confident reflective writing, then demonstrate through a series of case studies, in which teachers, university lecturers and pupils work together, how the theory is put into practice in the classroom.

Themes include:

• How to support children in writing in a variety of interesting genres
• How to make links between the National Curriculum (2013) for History and for English
• How to plan for breadth and depth studies in the new National Curriculum
• How activities in History 5 – 11 can be developed into exciting extended writing

The second half of the book draws upon case studies from a number of real primary classrooms with children of different ages. Each case study shows how teaching was planned to develop children's confidence and enjoyment in discussion and to scaffold reasoned, written explanation and argument. Topics presented are all relevant to the new curriculum framework and include talking and reading about:

• Time, change and significance over 6000 years - writing a television script
• Celtic Britain and the Roman Army - writing a travel brochure about Celtic Britain
• The destruction of Roman towns - writing a Saxon poem
• An archaeological investigation of a body in a Danish peat bog - writing a newspaper report
• Did any countries benefit from WW11? - writing an argued viewpoint
• The expansion westwards of European settlers - writing a flap book exploring different perspectives.

This indispensable book provides not only sources for pupils to use in their writing, but also models and exemplars of different styles and voices to draw upon.

PART

1

Theoretical framework for understanding the role of talk and reading in developing confident reflective writing

CHAPTER

1

Historians’ themes and genres

Hilary Cooper

The present, backed by the past, is a thousand times deeper than the present when it presses so close that you can feel nothing else.

Virginia Woolf 1976

Writing about objects

Neil McGregor, Director of the British Museum

In A History of the World in 100 Objects Neil McGregor (2010) describes objects representing a span of two million years and many civilisations. The text is based on scripts for twenty fifteen-minute-long radio broadcasts. McGregor is a great believer in the power of objects to get into the heads of people in the past, to get into someone else’s life. He says that the point of a museum is to understand what the world looks like from ‘somewhere else’, not from the present. He explains that most of us learn history from books, but that physical objects give us much more immediate access to the ideas and concerns of the people who made them, how they lived and the things in which they believed. In his introduction (p.4) he says, ‘It is of course only one history of the world, so we hope that you will enjoy finding and making your own connections, constructing your own history of the world’. Children would enjoy making their own illustrated history of the world, or of ancient civilisations, or of a particular time span, based on objects. They might begin by writing the radio scripts then combine these to write the book. And there are many ways this could be organised, at different levels.

The stories of objects

In Shakespeare’s Restless World Neil McGregor (2012) explains the stories that objects can tell us. He explains, for example, that a beautifully made, little, wooden ship, about 20 inches long, which we may assume to be the toy of a proud sixteenth-century child, is in fact an offering of thanks to God for the safe delivery from witchcraft of James V1 of Scotland and his new wife, Anne of Denmark, who nearly drowned at sea in 1590. A woman called Agnes Berwick had confessed, under torture, to being part of a coven of Scottish witches who raised the storm by sailing out to sea in a sieve and drowning a Christian cat. She was garrotted and burnt in front of Edinburgh Castle in 1591.

Sometimes, as with this wooden ship, we know the stories objects have to tell. Children might retell such a story in their own words. Or, with further research, in this case about James V1 and witchcraft, they might expand this story. Often no one can be sure how objects were used or what they may have meant to people at the time, or who might have made or owned them, especially if they are objects from prehistory. But it is possible, based on what we know of the time, and if there is no contradictory evidence, to write a possible story about it and the lives and beliefs of those who made and used it. Although it is always better to see objects rather than photographs a brilliant website for accessing images – or any information about the Anglo-Saxon period ishttp://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/woruldhord/education/daily_life.html.

Bee Wilson, historian and food writer

Another interesting example of writing about objects is Bee Wilson’s book, Consider the Fork: a history of invention in the kitchen (2011), which focuses on kitchen tools. Wilson reflects on the fact that the tools that surround us in the kitchen have all been shaped by human inventiveness, and in turn have shaped our lives. And she reminds us that our kitchens are full of ghosts, not just those of the implement innovators but of the ancestors who used their inventions and in her fascinating book she lets us see these ghosts more clearly.

Wilson says that if you have no sense of the past you cannot place yourself within a context so that you will have no understanding of time or respect for memory.

Children might like to make a book about changes in kitchen utensils over a long period of time, or they might prefer to research and write about changes in other aspects of social history, from the Anglo-Saxons to the present, or the legacy of Greek or Roman architecture, art or literature on subsequent British history. Again there are many ways in which this could be organised, perhaps different children researching and writing about different objects related to the theme. Or they might compare objects, for example religious objects, from early civilisations.

This approach, similar to that of A History of the World in 100 Objects, would provide opportunities for making links within and between periods and civilisations over long periods of time, ‘make connections, analyse trends, frame historically valid questions and create their own structured accounts’ (DfE 2013:188 Aim 4).

Writing about sites

Tom Christenson, archaeologist

Recently a site has been excavated in Lejre, Denmark, which is very exciting indeed because Tom Christenson, the director of the archaeological project, thinks that it is the Mead Hall, described in great detail in the oldest English poem, Beowulf. It was this hall that was attacked by the monster Grendel, who was eventually defeated by Beowulf. The story takes place in the fifth or sixth century and was brought to England by the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlers. The story itself suggests many writing opportunities.

Christenson (1991) wrote about the early investigations of the site in an academic journal. His paper is illustrated with archaeological plans, photographs of the site, and artefacts found there and diagrams showing post holes where buildings stood. The paper explains why the site is important, what is already known about it, how it has been excavated, what has been found and what new understandings this might give us.

I am not suggesting that children should submit articles to academic journals. But they could write a paper in this style, about a site they have visited, for the information of other visitors (with an abstract, key words, subheadings, labelled figures and properly referenced to their reading). Some children may concentrate just on the abstract and key words, with some labelled illustrations. This would be a good opportunity to select key information and set it out logically and briefly. The longer paper would involve key aspects of information writing.

Or children might design and describe activities they would like to see developed at the sites, to help visitors to understand better who had lived there and how.

Writing based on diaries, letters and oral accounts

Peter Moffat, author of The Village

The BBC 1 drama The Village (2013) was constructed from diaries, letters and oral accounts, in order to tell the story of a village in the Peak District, over the whole of the last century. It illustrated the importance of such i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• PART 1 Theoretical framework for understanding the role of talk and reading in developing confident reflective writing
• PART 2 Case studies: models for practice
• Afterword
• Index