This activity designed by Ann Moore is a simple PowerPoint exercise to conduct with Year 5 and 6 pupils whereby they are taken on a whistle stop tour of key events in British history from ancient times to the present day. The slides are organised in such a way that teachers can ask children if they know what the image on the slide is all about, before the teacher moves the animation forward to reveal further clues and an explanation.

It is a straightforward way of helping children to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, before they embark on either an overview or depth study.

A second activity, suggested by Ian Dawson, uses the same PowerPoint slides and offers the chance to build up children’s sense of period. For this it will help if you delete the text from the slides, just leaving the pictures.

Take one or more slides in turn and ask children to identify the historical period and then explore with them two important aspects of sense of period:

1. Which visual clues tell them what the period is?
2. What is there about life in this period that’s different from life at other times? [this helps create a sense of what’s distinctive about any period]

Don’t do too many slides at once – this is best done briefly but regularly so that children gradually build up an understanding of the task and can revisit periods through these illustrations in a later school year.

Download the Resource

Download the lesson plan [ click here ]

Download the resources:

• Resource 1: PowerPoint [ click here ]

• Resource 2: Timeline [ click here ]