As a teacher it currently seems to me that a lot of attention is given to the children who need to meet age-related expectations. While these pupils’ needs are important and their needs must be met, this focus can mean that greater depth and ‘more able’ pupils are often forgotten. It is essential that more able learners are not neglected and are given ample opportunities to showcase their knowledge and shine.

 

History is one subject where, through careful consideration and planning, more able learners can thrive. Within this blog post, I will examine how to identify and challenge more able learners in history, in the context of primary teaching. These thoughts derive from personal experiences and from extensive research on the relevant literature and recent Ofsted reports. I will focus on ‘historical knowledge’, ‘historical understanding’ and ‘historical enquiry’ in order to suggest how we can think about challenging more able learners in history.

Often, children whose strength lies in history will find that they are confident in literacy. Although strong literacy skills will greatly benefit their ability to share, form and communicate their ideas and findings, this does not necessarily mean that they are or will be more able historians. Interestingly, I think that the personal interests of children play a pivotal part in whether they have excelled in history beyond their age-related expectations. This is true from children as young as Year 1, to pupils nearing the end of their primary education. As educators, particularly if you are a subject leader, it is essential that time is taken to identify those children with a personal interest in history, and to provide them with opportunities to showcase their knowledge.

First and foremost, the subject of history is rooted in knowledge; it is a knowledge-based subject (Runeckles, 2018: 10). While it is essential that pupils’ analytical skills are developed, this cannot be done without first ensuring that all pupils have a secure grounding in historical knowledge. This is also made clear in recent literature from Ofsted inspectors. Tim Jenner, HMI, Ofsted’s subject lead for history, has stated that when teaching history there must be an emphasis placed on content and knowledge (Jenner, 2021). In the most recent Ofsted reports, the term ‘knowledge’ has been divided into knowledge of ‘substantive concepts’, which relates to broader concepts, such as empire, monarch and economy, and ‘chronological knowledge’, which refers to the broader concepts within history, such as the key features of Anglo-Saxon England (Jenner, 2021).

 

The National Curriculum does expect pupils to “understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed” (DFE, 2013). The enquiry and analytical skills required to thrive in history are essential. However, these skills cannot be developed without first imparting the key historical knowledge to children.

To emphasise this point, let us look at an example. Imagine a teacher wants to include a module on Boudicca in their history curriculum. Boudicca is listed in the National Curriculum for History under a non-statuary example, and has crucial ties with the statuary module on the Roman Empire and its impact on Britain. For the pupils to understand Boudicca’s historical significance, they would first need to have a secure grasp of the key features of the Roman Empire. Following this, they would then need to be taught the key components of Britain during this time. This knowledge would be essential before embarking on a specialised study of Boudicca. If the teacher then wished to hone and develop pupils’ analytical and enquiry skills, they could include a lesson on the conflicting sources that are available regarding Boudicca. To understand the primary written sources, however, they would first need to have a secure understanding of the historical knowledge of Boudicca, the Roman Empire, and the political landscape of Britain during this time.

 

Building historical knowledge takes time, as it requires a build-up of knowledge. As a result, educators may not see this accumulation of knowledge until a significant period of learning time has passed. Nevertheless, for children to develop their enquiry skills, historical knowledge is essential.

To see progression within a pupil’s historical understanding, historical knowledge, understanding and enquiry are best taught alongside one another. Historical knowledge and understanding are inextricably linked, and it would be difficult to separate these concepts within every lesson. Nevertheless, if a child is demonstrating the potential to achieve beyond the age-related expectations in history, their historical understanding could be one way to identify this – and thus to extend and challenge their learning. More able learners often process the key historical knowledge more quickly than their peers, which in turn means that they often quickly grasp the role of criteria in formulating and articulating an historical explanation or argument. Furthermore, more able learners are frequently able to draw generalisations and conclusions from a range of sources of evidence. One way to identify this could be ensuring that teachers ask open-ended questions, as the answers that children arrive at depend largely on questions asked.

 

I try to implement these open-ended questions in lessons, particularly across Key Stage 2. One approach which has worked particularly well came to light in a Year 3 lesson on “What did the diet of a typical Stone Age person encompass in prehistoric Britain?” This lesson relied on enquiry-based learning, which, although sometimes more difficult to deliver, lent itself well to inputting open-ended questions and highlighted the investigative nature of history. The children were given ‘organic evidence’ (pretend human waste), which pivoted around unpicking evidence and how historians use different types of evidence to find out about the past.

 

From this lesson, after unpicking our evidence, all of the children were able to deduce that prehistoric people ate nuts, seeds and berries. Pupils with a more advanced understanding were able to conclude that prehistoric inhabitants had to find food for themselves and that this is one of the reasons people from that time are called ‘hunter-gatherers’, because they had to hunt and gather their food.

 

For the children who had already come to the conclusions about hunter-gatherers, I asked more open-ended questions, which required them to draw their own conclusions, using the evidence that had been assessed, including “What about the meat?”, “Why haven’t we found meat in the organic evidence?” Some of these children were able to utilise their knowledge from previous lessons on Stone Age Britain and concluded that there were certain dangers in finding meat. They explained that people had to kill the animal and prepare it themselves, which was dangerous. One child even went on to say that meat also rots and that may have been why there was no surviving meat within the evidence. Although these open-ended questions help to stretch the more able learners, it does require teachers to direct the more challenging questions to the correct pupils, which relies on teachers knowing which of the pupils are excelling in history. 

I often find that historical enquiry skills are the hardest to master. From teaching this within lessons, it seems the key component to identifying the more able learners in history is to identify whether the pupils can link history together. Can they use their knowledge to comment on how the lives of people from the past have changed over time? Can they identify trends and commonalities between contemporary cultures? Do they notice how key changes transformed the lives and the culture of a particular civilisation? Perhaps most essentially, can the more able children use their historical knowledge and understanding to draw conclusions on events, people and places from the past? This relies on a pupil being able to problem-solve and reason with evidence, and apply this knowledge in order to evaluate the evidence in question.

 

Below is an example of a child’s work. The lesson was titled “What was bronze used for?”

 

I have chosen this example because this pupil was able to link their knowledge together, to form their own conclusions, which were based on key factual knowledge. For example, this child independently came to the conclusion that because their weapons were better, their quality of life improved. Amazingly, this pupil also commented on the fact that people from the Bronze Age in Britain no longer had to kill animals to make clothes, which meant that their lives really changed. Below is another example of a pupil drawing from their accumulated knowledge, in order to compare and contrast civilisations:

This is another example of a greater-depth learner in action. They had knowledge of Greece and Rome, and a battle that took place. Already, it is clear that they have an understanding of the cross-over and interaction between these two civilisations. Not only this, but they also know that trade took place between the two civilisations. Finally, they have commented on how this trade is clear from primary evidence. This pupil has not only demonstrated that they hold a secure knowledge of the Battle of Corinth, but they have also highlighted their ability to use evidence to draw their own historically valid conclusions.

 

To support and enable pupils to draw conclusions and analogies from historical sources, it is vital for the teacher to model how to do this (Runeckles, 2018:52). In mathematics, for example, you would not expect children to solve a worded problem on multiplication, which required reasoning, without first teaching them the basic skills of multiplication. How often do you model being a historian to your class?

 

For example, imagine you are teaching your class about the Spartans. The written sources on Sparta derive largely from sources written at a much later date, and not composed by Spartans. One could take an example from a Roman scholar (Aristotle or Plato) on the Spartan education system, the Agoge, and explain that these individuals were Roman and lived two hundred years after Classical Greece had ended. One could then ask, “How might that affect their account?” This sort of task could be implemented within a range of topics and encourages a dialogue between teachers and pupils. If these enquiry-based examples and questions are built into lessons, across modules, pupils are provided with opportunities to enhance their ability to analyse evidence and draw conclusions from a vast amount of evidence.

Although I have separated the teaching of history into historical knowledge, historical understanding and historical enquiry, ultimately each of these elements is best taught concurrently. It is possible to include each of these aspects within one lesson, particularly as they are inextricably linked. 

Perhaps most importantly, it is crucial to ensure that teachers are ambitious, not only with curriculum coverage, but also with regards to their expectations of pupils. Regardless of whether pupils have demonstrated that they are more able, children of all abilities thrive on high expectations and on knowing their teacher believes they can and will accomplish great things. So get your young historians thinking!