For the Love of Books: A Street Through Time
This week I’ve had my history head on. I’m currently finalising some training that I’ll be delivering next week around teaching history through concepts. I’ve also put an on demand training clip together around chronology. This really isn’t a sales pitch by the way, but might explain why I decided to choose this week’s book now.
A Street Through Time is one of my favourite books to use for history teaching. The concept of the book is simple – fourteen versions or snapshots of the same ‘street’ from fourteen different time periods. Each one builds and develops as the time periods move on, and from a Primary history teacher’s point of view, it makes approaching the substantive concepts of the National Curriculum really easy to target and teach within lessons. Each street is beautifully illustrated with great detail to show what life would have been like in each time period. There are annotations and descriptions of key aspects of the street and its great to demonstrate to the children what life looked like during those times in a way that they can really access. I am such a fan of anything that lays out chronology in a clear, ordered and straightforward way, and the very idea of this book alone fills me with excitement. It’s ideal for history teaching and if you’ve never seen it or used it before, it’s another one you really should be looking at.
Teaching chronology
The very principle of this book is putting things in order. This is something that we expect children to grasp very early on in their Primary school lives, so having a picture book that supports this is ideal. Everything moves in chronological order and is relevant to British history, which is what the National Curriculum wants children to really understand and investigate – ‘the history of these islands as a coherent narrative’. This book demonstrates that narrative beautifully. From the Stone Age to the Roman times, the development is presented so clearly, and then the backwards steps taken after the Romans left Britain and the redevelopment as more time passed beyond the Saxons and Vikings up to now. It puts the history of Britain into a clear story and provides children with relevant and interesting information about each time period and how the people lived.
Whilst the whole book is one big timeline, the final few pages show a proper timeline to go with the fourteen versions of the street that it has portrayed. What I love about this as it really helps to put these streets and time periods in context with the rest of the world. The pictures of each street are aligned with key events that happened in other parts of the world that form part of our history. This helps to put things into perspective and make judgements about the significance of events in line with others that happened at the same time. Children can use these pages to consider how something that was going on in one place may or may not have had an impact on the history of their own islands. It also demonstrates the parallels of history that at first glance seem impossible or at least improbable. Trying to teach children about the parallels of different peoples who existed at the same time, or to understand the lack of similarity between civilisations that existed alongside each other is really challenging. But this book helps, and anything that helps children to understand these ideas is really relevant to teaching.
Historical Concepts
What’s also great about this book is the work that can be done around concepts: chronology, similarity and difference, cause and consequence. These key aspects that the National Curriculum directs focus to are easy to address from this book. Comparing the streets from different time periods is such a simple way for children to consider similarities, differences and changes over time. The notes and descriptions also give evidence for what life was like and why it may have been like that. But what I really love is how it addresses some of the concepts that as a school you may have chosen to pursue through your history curriculum. Farming and food for example, there are lots of examples for how this developed through history on each page. The concept of shelter is one which is really easy to develop an understanding of in this book, from early nomadic tents, to the grand structures that were developed and built as time periods moved on. Technological advancement and the concept of tools or weaponry are displayed on the pages too. It really is full of wonderful information for the children to develop their knowledge and understanding of different areas of history, and again, it is all set out chronologically and is a book that can be continuously referred back to throughout their time in Primary school.
A street with a story
It really is a fantastic way of telling the story of how people have developed over time. The illustrations are detailed and beautiful to look at. Set across double pages, each version of the street, set next to a river (as rivers are extremely important to any settlement as a source of water, food and transportation), provide a stunning view of what the settlements might have looked like. Detail is given to the different aspects of each street, giving the children a vivid window into what these settlements may have really been like. It shows the different skills and trades that people undertook and how they developed. It gives amazing views of how buildings developed and where they developed. I loved seeing the development of the fort on the hill and how it eventually becomes a grand castle and is then left to ruin when it serves no purpose anymore. The illustrations tell stories within the story and it is a wonderful way for the children to explore history in such a visual and creative manner.
I love using this book. It is a fantastic way of encouraging the children to look closely at a secondary piece of evidence and really explore what the world was like and compare it to what we know and have now. It’s a window into the past and it tells a lot of our story in terms of how settlements in Britain developed and evolved, often due to external factors. There are bits missing, important bits, but that’s what makes our job fun and interesting – filling in the gaps. To cover those bits would be an entirely new blog, one which I would definitely like to write at some point. But for now, I leave you with the wonderful content of this book, A Street Through Time.
If you’ve used it, let someone else know how. It’s great to share.