This snapshot, taken on
02/02/2010
, shows web content acquired for preservation by The National Archives. External links, forms and search may not work in archived websites and contact details are likely to be out of date.
 
 
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You can use our web resources in your teaching for a range of classroom activities, including lessons with the whiteboard, group work, personalised learning, exam revision and research, as well as teaching and reinforcing literacy and ICT skills. There is also material in the student section to support study skills in history.

History

All of our education site resources support the National Curriculum for history. Our resources aim to help students to develop their skills in historical enquiry, evaluate evidence in order to reach conclusions and communicate about the past.

Literacy

Established readers can learn to read a range of texts, build their vocabulary and carry out information retrieval. Established writers can learn to redraft and provide narrative structure to their work. Some of our lessons are specifically designed for literacy.

ICT

We provide opportunities to contribute to the curriculum requirement for ICT.

Creating your own materials

We hope you will also use our historical sources to recreate your own tasks for groups or individuals in the classroom. You are free to download our images to create your own teaching materials provided they are presented with a document reference and linked to the website. However, images for commercial publication will have to observe the usual terms of copyright.

Online resources

Lessons

Lessons are small-scale, enquiry based tasks using a handful of individual sources. They can be used online or printed out for classroom use as PDFs.

All lessons can be used on a whiteboard. Text can be enlarged and background information or teacher's notes hidden if wished.

Topics

Topics provide in-depth information on a subject, organised into themes or case studies which investigate a particular question. Pupils are given guided access to primary sources and encouraged to reach wider conclusions. They learn how to construct an argument and to support it with appropriate evidence.

The topics include interactive tasks, games, worksheets, background information, notes on sources, timelines, glossaries and teacher's notes. Most of this material is available to print out. Where the original source is difficult to read, we have provided written transcripts and, in our more recent topic sites, audio transcripts.

It isn't necessary to work through a whole topic - individual case studies or selected sources exist as stand-alone activities for the classroom.

Resource packs for videoconferences and virtual classroom sessions

Preparation materials are available for some of our sessions and can be downloaded from this website. These contain documents and teaching notes. Teachers may also consider using them to create their own resources for various topics.

Film clips

Focus on Film contains all of the film clips which appear across the whole education website. Clips can be downloaded for free to edit in film software or used to create different teaching resources intended for classroom use. However, film for commercial publication will have to observe the usual terms of copyright.

Podcasts

We offer a range of podcasts with supporting documents and transcripts which can be downloaded for free and used to create additional resources.