History Enquiry Skills  

Year 2 started their History topic today by looking at a special painting. They became detectives and asked lots of questions and found clues in the picture that would tell them what it was about, where, when it was. Their main ideas were: a village on fire, buildings on fire, a river on fire, an old picture, old boats on a river.

They were then told it was a picture of a big fire…. The Great Fire of London.

They looked again at the painting and discussed where London was and what was meant by a city.  Someone in the class said, “A city is where lots of people live together and there are lots of houses.” Someone else added, “There are busy roads and you need to hold your mum’s hand to cross.”

Next, they were given a series of maps to look at- maps of London over a period of 2000 years.

The children studied the maps and discussed ideas with each other. They were asked:

1. Find a way to group the maps
2. Explain how you grouped them     
3. Put the maps into time order- chronological order

The children worked really well together trying to find ways to group them.

Some children didn’t know what a map was so they looked at how to use an atlas and Google maps and learned about maps on phones and Sat Navs in cars and how we use them to find places.

They grouped the maps according to:

• their colour (some being black and white and others being coloured)
•  size
• some children spotted a big wall round some of the maps and grouped them together.

Next they had a very exciting lesson where paper was rolled out on the hall floor to make a time line and they were taught how to place the maps into the correct order (chronological order) to show the history of London over a very long period of time (2000 years). The maps enabled them to discover how much London has changed over hundreds of years.

They were learning about life in London and how it has changed over time- enquiry skills.

Roman times 400AD They looked at how the city of London (when first founded in the Roman period) had gates and walls. They learned that the roads existed only north of the Thames River. The children noticed that London didn’t have a lot of houses or buildings and realised not many people were living there. They also noticed there were no buildings on the south of the river-  just empty land and fields.

A hundred years later: The Middle Ages Period 1400s The children saw that the Roman walls still existed but there were now more roads and buildings within those walls and the roads were higglety, pigglety. This helped them to realise that there must be more people living in London now. On the other side of the river, the south of the river, they could see it was just starting to be built on too. They learned about north, south, east and west.

By the 1700s  they saw the Roman walled shape wasn’t as clear now but could still see the pattern in the streets of the walls of the old Roman city. It was clear to see it was becoming a much bigger place with lots of buildings. There were lots of houses and buildings all around the river so the river must be important for people and jobs.

The children went right down the kitchen roll, right through time to today, 2026, where they could see that London is a huge city now, containing millions  of people, buildings and roads all around the River Thames. Over 8 million people!

 

The children had lots of fun working together to create their own actions for the words in a song called O God, You Search Me.

This song is based on Psalm 139- a Psalm they have been learning about.