Great Fire of London in Year 1

[SleepingStandingUp]

So this weekend it'll be helping my 5 year olds make cardboard houses and then lots of pretend fire burning them down. With my eldest we did a big picture with lots of tissue paper fire and I can honestly say it still feels like such an odd thing to teach 5 year olds about.
Why is it still such a big thing on the primary school curriculum? I just don't really see why we need to be taxing 5 year olds about how London burned down once!
Aibu? Surely there other history that's more age appropriate? I know it's all a big gory etc but I just feel like more sensitive kids might get really disturbed by so much talk about burning houses!

Very true.

Just wait until they do Titanic in Y2.

Can't remember DS doing Titanic but maybe they sensibly decided not to do a dress up for it like they do the Romans, Vikings, Egyptians and WW

Yup, that's exactly what I said. Word for word in fact. Got a petition with 1 signature on it and everything! Absolutely haven't conceded my point and accepted I'm wrong in the face of sensible posts. Nope. I want to abolish history for 3 to 18 year olds.

The learning, not the commemoration. Schools have been selling poppies all week. They have talked to the kids about it last week. Obviously will into next week again and they'll do the two minutes silence on Tuesday. Our Scouting group will be in the Remembrance Parade Sunday, we've had to talk about it last week so they have context. We'll talk about it again when we meet on Tuesday for our history badge.

If you leave your job over a MN post where the op concedes her point and has said absolutely nothing negative about the school or the teachers, then you have bigger issues than me. There has been ONE negative comment about teachers on this thread, and both myself and a pp argued back

Dd did Titanic in Y2, she's currently Y4 so it's fairly recent. Few things engage her in the way Titanic did. I remember doing WW2 a little older than her and can still recite Neville Chamberlain's speech verbatim. Most kids love content that's fraught with danger and daring, but far enough removed from their normal every day lives that it still feels quite distant and 'safe' to them. It's why Horrible Histories is so popular. Learning about the discovery of penicillin just doesn't quite cut it for kids that age, unless you can bring it to life visually with some gruesome facts.

Unfortunately you can't win with books either way. Ill never forget the parents complaining about the kids getting a Mr Men book in Nursery and what a "pointless" present it was. Thankfully our school do this every Christmas in every year, also Halloween prizes, attendance prizes etc are books. I'm sure it pees of many parents but my kids love it.

So they’re ok learning that soldiers were killed en masse purposely but you have issue with an accidental fire?

Ooh I didn't know that! I guess knowledge has moved on since I did it 30 odd years ago 😁

Well quite apart from the fact I've stayed several times I'd conceded my point , it's the relatedness I was thinking of. House fires feel much closer than old wars. But there looks of well articulate responses that have said why in wrong and I've repeatedly accepted that.

Speaking as a teacher, it's actually a great history topic for Year 1.

• It was a large-scale event, but within the understanding parameters of a 5/6 year old, who can understand the destroying of a city, better than, say, the political to-and-fros of something like WW1, or the wildly-different culture of something like the ancient Mayans or Egyptians.
• Only a couple of people were killed, so not dwelling on violence.
• It was an accidental event. Not someone doing something dangerous on purpose.
• Involves a location that most are familiar with, and maybe have been to.
• Has good curriculum links to English and art - vital and enjoyable to the little ones.
• Links to fire safety.
• It's a simple story, with characters and events that are relatable to small children.

There's a reason it's been done for so many years.

I’m a TA. The children absolutely love the topic. It really gets them into history.

Just what I was thinking! Same here. By 7, I was an old hand at Tudor martyrdom horror stories, including methods of torture used in the Tower. (Priest holes in country houses were the ‘gentle’ end of that bit of my early education!)

Oh, I used to love stories of priestholes!
We had a picture up in our classroom of the martyrdom of St Sebastian. His whole torso wounded with arrows, blood streaming down his chest as he looked heavenward. 🙏

As a year 1 teacher, it’s a great way to teach cause and consequence which is part of the history national curriculum. It changed the way houses were built so quite a significant event. I’d also showed how first hand experiences - Samuel Pepys diary - can help with history.

As a teacher you should know better than to parrot the myth that only a few people were killed. As I posted earlier:

People often say the Great Fire of London caused very few deaths but that’s really only the official figure. Record-keeping in 1666 was extremely poor, many parish registers were destroyed and the fire burned hot enough to obliterate remains. The real number of casualties was almost certainly far higher than the handful recorded, especially among poorer residents who were less likely to be counted in the first place

One of my training schools during my PGCE was in Nantwich - and we did indeed teach about it! Also the local civil war stuff too. I've only taught in a handful of schools but in every one we've made the effort to include local history, it's part of the curriculum (this is secondary rather than primary but I'm sure that they have local history on their curriculum too).

My little boy in year 2 recently did this. They built houses out of cardboard and then the local fire brigade came and set them on light and then put the fire out. They used it as an opportunity to teach them about fire safety and the kids loved it.

I take the point. But the level of discussion that would involve would be far too high for children who are 5/6 years old.

That's a great discussion point to raise in upper KS2 or beyond, but isn't appropriate for KS1.

Telling me "as a teacher you should know better" is, frankly, a low blow. Honestly, it's not that serious. It was a Saturday morning MN post. If you're that upset about it, I suggest you get into teacher training forthwith, and try and do it better yourself. Or design your own history curriculum to be delivered by non-specialists.

If you've got better ideas of child-appropriate topics for history, then I can assure you, teachers would be all ears. If you haven't got any better ideas...

My DC’s primary school did thar too. They occassionally talk about it now - youngest is 14!

Those are Key Stage 2 topics…the national curriculum sets out what is taught and when (I’ve been teaching for 33 years, so in that time I’ve taught all primary year groups several times over 😂).

Egyptians are usually in Year 5, Roman Empire usually in Year 4, as most schools teach history chronologically in KS2, starting with the Stone Age in Year 3 and ending with WWII (Battle of Britain) in Year 6. Some schools switch it round though (which I’d prefer to be honest) and start with WWII in Year 3, ending with the Stone Age in Year 3, as it’s easier for children to understand the pre-history timeline as they get older.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c2917e5274a1f5cc762cf/PRIMARY_national_curriculum_-_History.pdf

This was more than 33 years ago… I can’t remember exactly what year but it was definitely in what is now KS1, as we had separate infant and junior schools and it was infant school.

Because London was the biggest city in the world at the time. Nantwich, not so much.

If you visit Chicago they bang on endlessly about their “great fire” of 1871. Im not kidding, we must have been told about it, very earnestly, at least 16 times in the week we were there!

I’m all for teaching mummification at any age…children (most children anyway) love things like that. When I did Egyptians with my Year 5s, we made a human sized ‘model’ out of old clothes and ‘stuff’ to act as the various organs. We used old tights stuffed with sand to be the intestines, and cooked spaghetti inside some netting to be the brains. We then took all the organs out (including using a crochet hook to hook out the ‘brains’) and placed them in canopic jars.

It was great 😂

I’m in Year 3 at the moment…so Stone Age-Iron Age for me this year - using soap to knap Stone Age tools. Not as much fun as disembowelment, but my classroom smelt good for days! 😀