Creative Teaching: History in the Primary Classroom

Rosie Turner-Bisset

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135397753
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Designed specifically for teachers with little subject knowledge or experience in history, this book provides trainees with the confidence they need to teach primary history. Based on Curriculum 2000, the book provides valuable step-by-step guidance on how to create, plan, develop, organize and assess high-quality teaching activities in primary history. This book: is full of teaching approaches, practical ideas, teaching activities, real-life case studies and vignettes of good teaching practice; covers both conventional and modern approaches - such as drama, role-play, story telling, music and dance; and explains how each approach can be adapted to suit all primary ages and abilities. Children with a range of learning needs and styles respond with enthusiasm to a wide variety of teaching approaches - and this book provides trainee teachers with that repertoire and variety.

CHAPTER 1

Creative teaching

Examples of creative teaching in history

Cameo 1: Local study

A teacher working in tandem with a colleague is doing the local study unit. They have recently taken their classes to St Albans Abbey for combined history, geography, religious studies and art work. At the Abbey the children undertook history/RE trails and art workshops with Abbey staff, and drew maps of the Abbey's layout. Back in the classroom, the teacher gathers her Year 3 class on the carpet. She tells them the story of Athelstan, the medieval peasant with a problem, and the Abbey tax collector who upset his plans by calling for his tithe (see Chapter 6). Just before the end of the story, she pauses and asks the children where Athelstan might have hidden his money. They have one minute to discuss it in pairs. She takes feedback quickly from the pairs, praises the children for good ideas, and finishes the story. She shares with them some documents from the Abbey which list the different goods sold in the market: butter, cheese, vegetables, apples and pears, meat, fish, leather goods, wool, linen, silk, clothing, basketry, jewellery, pottery and glassware. She divides the class into groups to make paper versions of these goods. There are three or four children to each stall making goods. All children have access to a loan collection from the library on medieval times so that they can make their goods look ‘right’. They have access to paper, pens and crayons. When they have made enough, they rearrange the room as a marketplace and the groups set out their stalls. They may carry on making goods while selling them. The children can take it in turns to go around and barter goods with other stall holders, while other children in their group mind their stall and make more goods.

Suddenly the teacher announces that the tax collector will be coming around in a moment to collect his tithe (one-tenth of all they have made or sold). The children frantically search for places to hide some of their goods, just as Athelstan did in the story. Some put them in storage trays, in folders, or in exercise books. Others, despairing at the last minute, sit on them. As the teacher comes around, each group has worked out one-tenth to give to her. There is much ‘innocent’ talk of ‘It's been a bad week, sir, haven't made much’ or ‘One of my cows has been ill’. After this the teacher signals that the market is over. The children groan: they were having fun! Everyone helps to tidy up and restore the classroom to its normal layout. The teacher settles the children on the carpet and ask what they have learned. Hands shoot up:

• They didn't use money in medieval times: they bartered instead;

• The Abbey took money from ordinary people to pay for building;

• What they ate in those times;

• What they wore in those times;

• They had pottery and glass;

• Shoes were made of leather;

• A tithe means one-tenth;

• People traded goods and swapped, say fish for clothing; or meat for pottery;

• People worked hard for themselves and their family then the tax collector came around and took some of their money;

• What houses were built of.

Cameo 2: The Victorians

A teacher is studying the lives of people at different levels of society with a Year 6 class. She gathers the children on the carpet and tells the story of Martha, from Lark Rise to Candleford, going for her first job as a housemaid at the age of 12. After the storytelling, the teacher asks for volunteers to make a freeze frame of part of the story, the moment when the door is opened to the children, and they confront the lady of the house. She then reads with them a typed section of the chapter from the book from which this comes and asks them to highlight in one colour all the words which are to do with time, and in another colour all the words which are the jobs Martha would have to do. She tells them that this is a source of primary evidence: it comes from a book of memories written by the grown-up who was Martha's friend as a child. They are going to look at two more sources. She asks them what they would do if they were going to cook a meal and needed to know how. The children suggest using one of Delia Smith's cookery books. She tells them that in Victorian times, if a newly married lady wanted to know how to run a house and treat her servants, she would use a manual of household management: an instruction book similar to the recipe books of today. She reads with them the next source of primary evidence: an extract from Cassell's Book of Household Management. The extract outlines the duties of a housemaid. She asks the children to tell her words they do not understand and explains them. She asks also if they could get up at 6 a.m. every day without being called. Most of the children who were bussed to school thought that 6 a.m. was not a problem, but getting up without being called was! They then carry out the same exercise of highlighting words to do with time and jobs.

The third source of evidence is a song, ‘The Serving-maid's Holiday’, which tells of all the jobs a housemaid had to do before her half-day holiday when she would go out and meet her young man. The teacher sings it twice, with the children learning the tune the first time and singing all together the second time. The same highlighting exercise is carried out. The teacher gives them a grid with three columns, one for each source of evidence. She checks that the children understand chronological order, and asks them to write down in each column the jobs each person in the evidence had to do, in order of time. During this time she works with the two least able groups who can do the task since it has been carefully structured, but who need encouragement to complete it. When the grid has been completed, she asks the children to write about ‘What was it like to be a housemaid in Victorian times?’ Some children adapt the title; all produce some writing (an example of children's work is given in Figure 1.1). The main historical learning from this lesson included:

• for the children to have some understanding of what it was like to be a housemaid in Victorian times;

• for the children to carry out historical enquiry and interpretation of evidence using primary sources;

• for the children to select and organize material for presentation of their interpretation in the form of writing.

The main literacy objectives were:

• for the children to read collectively some challenging texts in different genres;

• to make sense of them;

• to produce high-quality pieces of extended writing.

The lesson also involved music in singing the song, and drama in creating the freeze frame of part of the story. This work occupied one whole afternoon and part of a literacy hour the following day to finish the stories.

Cameo 3: Games and simulation

A teacher has been studying the Tudors with her Year 4/Year 5 class. They have done some work on analysing a portrait of Drake and are now discussing Drake's voyage around the world. The teacher puts a large map of the world on the board, and gives the children a sheet with a chronicle of the voyage. They read this as a shared text,

Figure 1.1 Children's work: Victorian maidservant

one child reading each line. For each location in the world that Drake went to, she asks for a volunteer to come and point to the place on the map. The child then puts a marker with the name of the place on the map and the date he was there. After this, she tells the class that, working in fours, they are going to design and make board games of Drake's voyages, but first they have to do a little planning and thinking. She has ready a number of board games: Monopoly, Game of Life, Journey Through Britain, Explore Europe, Scotland Yard, and Cluedo. She asks for volunteers to explain each game briefly. They discuss what the games have in common, and, with the children contributing, the teacher draws up on the board a list in two columns:

(1) those items their game must have; and (2) those items their game might have. Each game must have a board, playing pieces, dice or spinners, a set of rules, and a set of playing instructions. They can have ‘chance cards’, ‘treasure cards’, ‘captured ships’ or any other extras they need for their game. Their board can be highly decorated and they can design a box for its storage. Later the games will be trialled and tested by other classes.

There is a buzz of excitement as the groups settle with their list of items, and start to plan and allocate roles and tasks. The teacher hands out a prepared sheet which gives a timescale for completion of the game, working one afternoon a week. At the end of the period, she has a reporting back session: one child from each group has to report back to the class. She has already trained the class in group work: each child is ready to be the resources manager (who fetches and tidies all resources), a time/order keeper (who keeps an eye on time and sorts out disputes), a recorder (who records in writing what is done) and a reporter/observer (who reports back to the class and observes the group work, achievement and behaviour, giving a score for each of these). The work continues over the half-term unit, occupying design technology time. In history they move on to considering the question: ‘Was Drake a hero or a pirate?’, using their knowledge from the board game work and documentary sources provided by the teacher.

The scheme of work described in this cameo represents learning over a period of six or seven weeks. It is a complex period of learning and presents an opposite view of learning to the kind detectable in official government documents or in Ofsted guidance for inspectors, which suggests that learning is simple, uncomplicated and almost mechanical in nature. The official view would seem to indicate that the teacher writes down the learning objectives on the board, ensures the children know what they are, the children do the learning activities, and hey presto, they achieve the learning objectives! Doubtless some learning occurs in single lessons, but, just as often, complex learning occurs over a period of time. In the Drake activity, clearly one learning objective for history would be to deepen the children's factual and conceptual knowledge of Drake's voyage (range and depth of historical understanding) before moving on to judging his achievements and whether he could be considered a hero or a pirate (historical enquiry and interpretation of evidence). This was to be achieved via knowledge transfer from one genre of text (the timeline) to another (the board game). There are also learning objectives one can write for geography (the use of maps), design technology (the design and making of the games), literacy (writing in the instruction genre) and PHSE (co-operation and collaborative group work).

All of the above cameos are examples of creative teaching. What makes them so will be explored in this chapter, which is in two sections. The first deals with the nature of creativity; the second moves from there into defining creative teaching. There is an analysis of how the three cameos are examples of creative teaching in history. Through an understanding of creative teaching one can aim to teach high-quality, challenging history, which exercises proper historical skills and processes and promotes the engagement of the historical imagination. The remainder of the book deals with how to achieve this aim.

An explanation of creativity

Creativity is a concept which needs some explaining. This explanation starts with a joke:

During the French revolution, hundreds of people were guillotined. One day, three men were led out to die. One was a lawyer, one was a doctor, and the third was an engineer.

The lawyer was to die first. He was led to the guillotine, the attending priest blessed him, and he knelt with his head on the guillotine. The blade was released, but stopped halfway down its path. The priest, seeing an opportunity, quickly said, ‘Gentlemen, God has spoken, and said this man is to be spared; we cannot kill him.’ The executioner agreed, and the lawyer was set free.

The doctor was next. He was blessed by the priest, then knelt and placed his head on the guillotine. The blade was released, and again stopped halfway down. Again the priest intervened: ‘Gentlemen, God has again spoken; we cannot kill this man.’ The executioner agreed, and the doctor was set free.

At last it was th...