How to develop pupils’ understanding of chronology at key stages 1 and 2

previous | contents | next

Section 4: How should teachers plan for the development of chronological understanding across key stages 1 and 2?

How to get started

As part of the review of your current scheme of work for key stages 1 and 2 you need to audit what chronological teaching and learning are already being undertaken. This review needs to focus on specific questions so as to enable teachers to observe whether pupils’ progression in chronological understanding is adequately addressed. The responses to the audit and questions will help you determine the extent to which you need to revise your existing plans and policy for history. The following questions might prove to be a useful starting point.

1. When are sequencing activities first introduced and what objects or pictures are used? When is the concept of chronological sequencing reinforced?
2. When is chronological language employed in teaching and learning activities?
3. What type of chronological language is employed? Is there an over-reliance on descriptive vocabulary at the expense of technical language?
4. Do any of the study units taught employ specific technical vocabulary? Is this technical vocabulary reinforced and extended in subsequent units?
5. When and how is the vocabulary of AD, BC, decade and century introduced?
6. When and how are timelines used? What types of timelines are employed?
7. Do you take the opportunity at the end of each year to enhance pupils’ chronological understanding by looking back to identify which events, people or issues have had the greatest significance?
8. Does the school employ activities to enable pupils to see how their current learning relates to the broader framework of history?
9. How and when do you assess children’s understanding of chronology?

It might be useful to employ the above questions to develop a pro forma with which to audit your current teaching and learning. This audit can be utilised to analyse whether teaching and learning activities are consistent and cover the requirements of the national curriculum.

Next steps

To enhance chronological understanding the following should inform planning and teaching.

1. Ensure diagnosis
• Make no assumptions about what has or has not been taught or learnt in or remembered from earlier years. Failing to do justice to the quality of earlier teaching and learning causes as many problems as assuming that pupils have been introduced to all aspects of chronological understanding.
• Undertake formative assessment of pupils’ chronological understanding at regular intervals. It might be a good idea to formatively assess pupils’ chronological understanding during the transition from the foundation stage to key stage 1 and then again during transition from key stage 1 to 2. Focus on resolving learning problems diagnosed in previous work.
  
2. Plan for sustained teaching and learning
• Regular and systematic reinforcement is essential. Focus on teaching to explicit objectives for chronological understanding. Build chronological understanding deeply into the framework of planning, rather than adding it in the form of discrete exercises alongside existing units of work.
• Reinforce chronological knowledge and understanding through units of work introducing and concluding key stages 1 and 2, and also those introducing and concluding each year of study.
• Make objectives and vocabulary relating to chronological understanding explicit to pupils in medium- and short-term planning documentation. This will also help new teachers who need to understand, for example, that teaching topics in chronological order is not the same as teaching for chronological understanding.
  
3. Link chronological understanding into historical enquiries
• Create opportunities to relate each new topic or enquiry to pupils’ existing mental chronological framework, thus steadily reinforcing and adding to their depth of knowledge and understanding.
• Plan links across key stages 1 and 2 in detail and, perhaps, build links into some enquiry questions in years 2 and 6 that refer back to and make comparisons and contrasts with topics from previous years, rather than being solely concerned with content covered in that year.
• Make use of particular opportunities for developing chronological knowledge and understanding that arise in enquiries about understanding of interpretations and significance, as well as through the more obvious contexts of causation, change and continuity.
• Place a topic or enquiry in its wider historical framework before and after it has been studied in detail.
  
4. Use visual images
• Visual images can build up pupils’ sense of period and help them use associated vocabulary with accuracy and confidence. For example, using a term such as ‘Tudor’, remembering key dates and relating individuals and events to the period is immensely difficult unless pupils have acquired a mental package of images related to the Tudor period. Timelines are more likely to be successful in reinforcing chronological knowledge and understanding if they contain visual images rather than simply words and dates.
  
5. Use stories and themes
• Activities that ask pupils to sequence a series of unrelated famous events or people (such as Romans, Vikings, Saxons) are unlikely to be successful in the early stages of key stage 2, because the sequence has no internal logic to help pupils make sense of it. Sequencing events and individuals from themes (such as the developing story of invasion and settlement; the stories of home and working conditions) is more likely to be successful, because pupils can use their knowledge of the story to give some order to the sequence.
• Recall of individual key events, people and dates is enhanced by being understood as part of a story, including long-term thematic stories.
  
6. Use a variety of learning styles
   • It is becoming common practice to use teaching activities that are linked to a variety of learning styles: the auditory, visual and kinaesthetic. This is just as relevant to enhancing chronological knowledge and understanding as to any other topic or concept. Some pupils will respond positively to tasks involving creating, drawing and illustrating timelines; others will prefer to take part in organising physical timelines or family trees across the classroom; while others will be happy to repeat dynasties or lists aloud as if learning tables. They key is variety to meet individuals’ needs.
     
7. Use timelines consistently in teaching and learning activities
   • Ensure that pupils have the opportunity to record their historical learning on individual timelines that they take with them from one class to the next.
   • Provide each class with a large timeline and ensure that it is actively used within teaching and learning activities.
   • Encourage the employment of timeline activities as the basis for school assemblies. Pupils should be able to observe what history teaching is coming next and what has been covered before.
     

previous | contents | next