History
Subject Co-ordinator: P. Midgley
At Seahouses Middle School our History syllabus is topic-based, and tapered to fit in with both the High School’s and First Schools’ syllabus.
Children’s learning is augmented with educational trips for each year group, and visits from the local museum staff.
The topics studied are:
Year 5
Tudors
Mining in 1913 – Local Studies
Fishing in the Northeast – Local Studies
Year 6
Ancient Egypt
Britain since 1945
Year 7
Famous People in History
Medieval Realms
Norman Conquest
The Black Death
Year 8
Images in History
The making of the United Kingdom 1500 – 1750
The French Revolution
British Middle Class Life in the 1900’s
Year 5
Tudor Experience
On the 15th of November our class was visited by Deborah from Bailiffgate Museum in Alnwick. She came dressed as a poor Tudor woman and had Tudor clothes for us to try on.
We also used some artefacts as a prompt for drama –- although sometimes it was hard working out what our artefacts were! We thought the inkwell might be a chimney pot!
Later we made posies from ribbons, flowers and herbs. We played a Tudor board game, and wrote Tudor insults on parchment using quills and ink.
Hope you enjoy the pictures - you foul breathed maggot pies!!
Year 6
Year 7
Living a thousand years ago
In their first project challenge year 7 went back in time to experience what it was like to live in an English village a thousand years ago. They were divided into three groups to experience cooking, sewing and building a wall.
In those days, most people were very poor and would only have one set of clothes to wear all the time so our first job was to make ourselves a medieval cowl, like a hoodie, which would keep our head and shoulders protected and warm.
The cookery group made a one pot meal made with whatever would have been available at the time – any vegetables, lots of barley to fill you up and, if you were lucky, even some meat occasionally!
Most people lived in a house with one room, sharing it with animals and a fire in the middle to cook on and keep you warm. The walls were made with sticks weaved together and mud to fill in the holes – this was called wattle and daub which Miss Carr’s group became very good at.
Year 7 came to the conclusion that life is definitely a lot easier now than it was then!
Important people in history
1. We know that history means anything that has happened in the past, whether it is long ago or just recently. It doesn’t have to be just about important people, it can also be about ordinary people like you and me and the way we live.
2. In history lessons so far at the middle school we have learned about the Tudor Kings and Queens, the Egyptians and Britain since 1930 amongst other things. Now we are trying to put twelve famous people from the past into chronological order as well as find out something about what they did and how they affected our present day lives. We have played a few games to help us remember key things about them.
3. We had to think about what might make a person become so important in history – it might be because they were born into royalty and changed the way the country was governed (like Henry VIII), or because they cared for people and saved lots of lives (like Florence Nightingale) or because they invented something which improved everyone’s lives and led to other inventions (like George Stephenson).
4. Our task was then to choose a person we might admire or deem to be very important and design a fact sheet which would educate others about them. To make people interested we would need to include pictures, maps as well as text and answer any questions that people might ask
• When were they born?
• Where did they come from and go?
• What did they do that was so great?
• Who exactly were they?
• Why do we admire them so much?
Click on link to open each piece of work.
Year 8
One of the tasks Year 8 pupils have to complete as part of their work in History, is to answer the key question: Was James I a powerful leader in a golden age?
Pupils have to conduct research on the Internet and use a variety of sources in order to help them answer the question. Findings have to be presented using ICT.
Click on link to open each piece of work.
