It is really important to create a framework of the past which  students can keep referring to. This is often neglected but hugely important. Read Jonathan Howson or Ian Dawson in back issues of Teaching History if you don’t believe us.

This one off free lesson acts as a starting point to help create the mental map kid’s needs. This can be used  as the first lesson you teach in year 7.

Then, keep referring to it time and again as you teach different topics and time periods.

It starts by introducing some famous characters from the past and uses them to introduce how historians have divided up time. The students  place our characters and time periods on the timeline, decide what different people from each time period looked like, before recording their own version.

Download includes:

•  Lesson presentation : PowerPoint
• Resource 1 timeline: PDF
• Resource 2 time period cards: PDF
• Resource 3 individual people: PDF
• Resource 4 differentiated worksheet: PDF