Community & Aspiration: Challenging Stereotypes
History: Comparing lives from different periods (Mary Seacole & Edith Cavell)
As an introductory session to Year 1’s History work on Mary Seacole, the year group planned a session on challenging stereotypes from the Community and Aspiration elements of the curriculum.
The unit included learning objectives that were directly sourced from the CARE progression grids:
In the days leading up to the explicitly taught sessions, the Year 1 team set up a challenge area, consisting of historical artefacts for the children to explore. The challenge created curiosity in the upcoming learning, encouraging the children to spend time drawing and writing about what they think some of the objects were used for.
Over the course of the series of History lessons, each artefact was revealed and discussed, showing the children how we learn about the past.
The first explicitly taught session, was explicitly linked to the CARE themes, focusing on treating people equally. First the children were taught that they could be whatever they want to be when they grow older.
The words Community and Aspiration were explicitly taught and the children repeated this vocabulary back to the teacher using ‘my turn’ / ‘your turn’
The main activity centred on the children drawing what they think people who do different professions look like. The children were encouraged to show clearly whether the drawing was of a man or woman, the colour of their skin and what they would wear.
This was followed by the children being shown a variety of images showing a diverse range of people doing those jobs. The diversity shown in the images were explicitly highlighted by the teachers.
The teachers provoked challenge by making statements like: “So only men can be builders!” The children were quick to challenge this idea as a result of their learning.
Discussions about people they know that do these jobs allowed the children to link jobs with people they know in real life.
In the subsequent session, the teachers introduced the children to Mary Seacole. The children were taught about her importance and explicit links were made to the previous lesson’s learning on stereotypes.
Specific plans for recalling the historical knowledge that was presented are outlined in the Medium Term Plan, which lends itself to the ongoing development of cultural capital for our children: ‘C1P to recap dates and facts, WR about why she is important’. These techniques C1P (Catch 1 Partner) and WR (Word Round) highlight the importance of our collaborative learning approach in the rehearsal and revisiting of knowledge.
During the timeline session, explicit links were made to previous learning on the Great Fire of London, Guy Fawkes and Titanic.
Later on in the unit the children were taught History skills. With the introduction of Edith Cavell, the children were able to explore a local link and make comparisons between her life and that of Mary Seacole.
The History work that continued highlighted their main achievements as historical figures (leaders). The children reflected on their own achievements and what they want to achieve in the future; this was learning that was linked back to the Aspiration work from earlier in the unit.
In their writing, the children demonstrated early evaluation skills, writing Mary is important because… and Edith is important because….
Towards the end of the unit, the History concept of change was explored. The children worked to compare nursing in the past to modern day nursing, allowing the children to develop their historical vocabulary, using words like similarity, difference, past present.
The unit of work ended with the children writing a letter to either Edith Cavell or Mary Seacole, thanking them for their achievements, bravery and determination.
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