The Victorians

Activities and Resources for 'What was it like for children living in Victorian Britain?'

Activities and Resources for ' How did life change in our locality in Victorian times?'

General Websites for Victorians

General Victorian Teaching Resources

Victorians - Clicker 5 Resource on LearningGrids.com

Promethean Resource - (National Whiteboard Network)

Powerpoint Resource - (National Whiteboard Network)

Powerpoint Resource - (Greenwich ICT)

Smartboard Resource - (Greenwich ICT)

Smartboard Resource - (Smart Education)

Places Change
Lesson plan and resources from UK Department for Transport

Write a newspaper report or be a news reporter. The Headlines History site contains real newspapers reports. The idea is that pupils become reporters on these newspapers. They can read and talk about the newspaper stories and then go on to interview up to 30 characters per era (through streaming video playback). These characters have witnessed the events which make up the six front page leads. The pupils then add quotes from these witnesses to the front page story to create their own version that they can then save or print out. www.headlinehistory.co.uk

www.primaryresources.co.uk	www.teachingideas.co.uk

What was it like for children living in Victorian Britain?

Place the changes in the period within a chronological framework; make appropriate use of dates and terms; demonstrate knowledge and understanding about the everyday lives of children in the Victorian period; show how some aspects of the period have been interpreted in different ways; select and combine information from a range of visual, textbook and documentary sources; communicate their knowledge and understanding of changes to children's lives in Victorian times in organised and structured ways.

Teaching Resources

WebQuest - A safe way to search the internet

Create an advertising poster for a Victorian toy
The Oxfordshire ICT Team have created a lesson plan with resources including a powerpoint.
www.ict.oxon-lea.gov.uk/history.html

Create an interactive quiz
Children use the Internet for the information and PowerPoint to create the hyperlinked quiz.
Quiz Show Powerpoint Templates

Create a multimedia presentation titled 'Life as a Victorian Child'.

Photographs of Victorian Children at work and play
www.hiddenlives.org.uk/photographs/

Lesson Plans and Resources on for a Victorian topic.

Victorian Childhood (TRE)
Image annotation activities
Teacher Resource Exchange

How did different Victorian children use their spare time? (TRE)
The lesson plan outlines how teachers can teach children about the pastimes of Victorian children and how children's literature was used to impart morals to Victorian children.
Teacher Resource Exchange

How can we find out about the life of a Victorian child using Family Resources?
A history lesson using real documents based on the family history of a Victorian boy called William Robert Towers who lived over 100 years ago.
www.learningcurve.gov.uk

This website provides 'classroom-ready' learning activities for teachers of History Key Stage 2 based on two QCA Schemes of Work:

• Unit 11 'What Was it like for children living in Victorian times?'
• Unit 12 'How did life change in our locality in Victorian times?'.

Each Unit has 5 Topics and each Topic includes several learning activities.  Each activity contains local history sources, plus Starter, Main & Plenary Activities, Children's Activity Sheets and Teachers' Notes.
victorians.westsussex.gov.uk/

www.bbc.co.uk/schools (Lesson ideas from Becta site )
	Nettlesworth Primary School	www.4learning.co.uk

www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk	The Workhouse	Victorian Children

How did life change in our locality in Victorian times?

Make appropriate use of dates, eg 1841, 1891; identify changes in the locality within the Victorian period; give some reasons for the changes studied; select information from various sources to find out about aspects of the period.

Teaching Resources

Promethean Resource - How life has changed in Hereford in the past (National Whiteboard Network)

Studying Census Returns
As part of history work, give children 1841 census returns from their own locality, if available. Discuss what sort of information is on a census form, and ask the children to list the headings or fields under which information is collected, e.g. age, occupation, place of origin, size of family.

Ask the children to investigate a prepared database containing this information, using some specific questions, e.g. How many farmers were there? How many inhabitants were over 70 years old? What was the most common occupation? Help them to identify patterns and draw conclusions about the area in 1841.

Example of Census project - Guston School

Ask the children to produce graphs for the fields they have investigated. Children’s conclusions could be very simple, e.g. typical names, ages of people working, types of occupation, family sizes.

Introduce the children to the local census data from 1891 on a prepared database. Ask them to research the same fields that they investigated earlier, and to print graphs and charts to display the information. Make comparisons, and discuss with the children what has changed since 1841. They speculate on the reasons for these changes, based on their own knowledge.

Discuss with the class how databases allow us to analyse and compare data easily. Make comparisons with modern society, particularly the distribution of age groups.

Learning Outcomes

• narrow down a complex search
• use graphs to provide supporting evidence for their conclusions

Investigating and Comparing 1841 and 1871 Census Data
The Guston School project shows how 19th century census data has been used by pupils to fulfil the Integrated Task requirement of QCA ICT Unit 5B. The work is linked to History Unit 12: Change in our locality in Victorian times.

The Coalbrookdale Interactive Census
An interactive version of the Coalbrookdale Census of 1851, complete with worksheets and lesson plans. Ideal for teaching skills of data retrieval as well as history.

How did life change in our locality in Victorian times Years 3/4
A lesson plan and activities introducing census returns as a source of information.
Teacher Resource Exchange

How did life change in our locality in Victorian times Years 3/4
A lesson plan and activities using census data to compare the residents of a local street in 1841 and 1891/1901.
Teacher Resource Exchange

The Here's History Kent web site contains a vast range of local history materials for the towns and parishes of Kent.

Your Area in Victorian Times

General Websites

snaithprimary.eril.net	woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk	Virtual Victorians