Bringing literacy and history closer together
David Wray and Maureen Lewis
The new statutory requirements for history in
the primary school (QCA, 1998) specify that, among some other things, children
at the end of Key Stage 2 should be expected to be able to:
- find out about the past by asking and answering questions from a range
of sources of information
- record their knowledge and understanding about the past in a variety of
ways.
Clearly neither of these requirements implies
an exclusive focus on text in primary history - information sources can, of
course, include artefacts, and children can record their understanding through
pictorial or dramatic means. Nevertheless, with the increasing focus on
literacy, it is inevitable that children’s reading and writing in history will
continue to receive even greater attention from primary teachers. This
increased attention poses two questions:
- How can teachers develop and extend their children’s abilities to read
and write appropriately and effectively in history?
- How can literacy teaching, that is, the concentrated work that will
take place in the literacy hour, include historical texts as source material
and develop children’s abilities to write in forms appropriate to the subject?
The Exeter Extending Literacy (EXEL) project
has, over the past five years, been exploring ways in which teachers can
incorporate literacy teaching into a range of curriculum areas and has
developed a number of teaching strategies which appear to help with both the
questions posed above. In this article we will describe some of the strategies
we have developed which will help teachers ensure their children meet the
statutory requirements in history. Further information about this work can be
found in Wray & Lewis (1997).
Finding
out in history
Most teachers will realise that simply asking
children to ‘find out about’ a topic, be it The Romans, King Alfred, Life in
Victorian Times or whatever, is likely to result in little more than children
copying sections from their reference books. We have found that children engage
much more profitably in finding out if they have, firstly, had the chance to
discuss and record what they already know about the topic under consideration
and, secondly, have been helped to ask more precise questions about this topic.
Techniques such as brainstorming and concept
mapping can be used to assist both of these. Children can be asked to generate
as many ideas as possible about a particular subject. When one Year 5 class
were asked to brainstorm The Romans, they came up with the following list of
ideas:
- Hadrian’s Wall
- toga
- roads
- villas
- Emperors
- Julius Caesar
- feasts
- sandals
- Britain
- wine
- gladiators
Their teacher then suggested that this list
could be grouped together into topics and, after some discussion, the following
groups of words were assembled.
Places and people
Rome
Hadrian’s Wall
Emperors
Julius Caesar
Britain
|
|
Everyday life
road
villas
wine
|
|
Clothes
toga
sandals
|
|
Entertainment
feasts
gladiators
|
Each group was then used to generate
questions the children could go on to answer. In Places and People, for
example, children wanted to know who Hadrian and Julius Caesar were and why we
have remembered their names. In Clothes, the question was asked, what else did
the Romans wear? These questions were then followed up by groups of children.
We have also found that grids can be very
useful in both of these areas. The KWL grid (What do I KNOW about this topic?:
What do I WANT to know?: What did I LEARN?) can help scaffold children into a
process of inquiry. An example KWL grid is given below.
What do I KNOW
about this topic? |
What do I WANT
to know? |
What did I learn? |
| |
|
|
A writing frame consists of a skeleton
outline to scaffold children's writing. The skeleton framework consists of
different key words or phrases, according to the particular generic form. The
template of starters, connectives and sentence modifiers which constitute a
writing frame gives children a structure within which they can concentrate on
communicating what they want to say, rather than getting lost in the form.
However, by using the form, children become increasingly familiar with it.
The activities briefly described here are in essence
literacy activities in that they focus on children interpreting and creating
non-fiction texts. The texts they involve have, of course, to be about
something and the fact that in these examples they are historical texts means
that at the same time as developing their literacy, children are also giving
attention to history. The literacy hour can therefore be used to develop
historical understanding, as long as its prime purpose of focusing on reading
and writing is maintained.
References
QCA (1998) Maintaining breadth and balance at Key Stages 1 and 2 London:
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
Wray, D. & Lewis, M. (1997) Extending Literacy London: Routledge