Local History: Culture on Your Doorstep

Ideas and practical activities to create a local history study and support other curriculum areas.
Use your local history as a teaching resource for cross-curricular work covering history, literacy, art, geography and maths; wherever you live and whatever period or geography your local history may include.

Written 2015, with the new national curriculum KS2 in mind but adapts to KS1 and KS3 in places.

Includes five example case studies of projects by schools and museum or heritage sites working together to test out activity responding to the new curriculum, covering these overarching themes:
- Investigating a heritage site (through the ages and a timeline)
- Investigating a local street (in this instance Victorian but transferable to other periods)
- Investigating a historical period (Stone, Bronze and Iron ages)
- Creative engagement with maths (using the art / design of Blackpool Illuminations to cover the full KS1 & 2 maths curriculum)
- Exploring the local town (in this instance a coastal town with a migratory mining history)

Each case study includes
- Description of a topic or activity
- Objectives and outcomes of the activity
- Practical activity suggestions to include in topics / lesson plans
- Top tips
- Links to further resources

Current History links
- the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements
- significant historical events, people and places in their own locality
- changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age
- a study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066
- ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-1901

The resource was originally commissioned by Curious Minds and is freely available to download.