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Year 4 · How do we know? Sources and your own place

How do we know? Reading a source

Understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources

25 minutes4 checks6 exit questionsNational curriculum objective

Lesson overview

What you'll learn in this lesson

Understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources

Key learning points

  • • Primary and secondary
  • • Sources are not only writing
  • • Three questions, every time
  • • What survives is not everything

This lesson at a glance

  • 25 minutes
  • 20 parts to scroll through
  • 4 quick checks
  • No marked quiz yet
  • Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses

Words to know

knowledgeconstructedsourcesprimarysecondary

Scroll down — the lesson carries on below

Part 1 of 20 · Intro5%
1

Introduction

Part 1 of 20

How do we know? Reading a source illustrationArchive-led lesson

Historical enquiry

How do we know? Reading a source

Everything we know about the past comes from something that survived: a letter, a coin, a wall, a photograph. Sources need reading carefully.

In a nutshell

Understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources

2

What you already know

Part 2 of 20

Before we start

What you already know

You have used sources in the Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Egyptian lessons.

Recap: y4-history-1Recap: y4-history-5
3

Key words

Part 3 of 20

Key words

Words you'll need today

source
Anything from the past that gives us information.
primary source
Made at the time by someone who was there.
secondary source
Made later by someone studying the past.
provenance
Who made a source, when, and why.
4

Learning cycle

Part 4 of 20

Learning cycle 1 of 2

Part 1 — Kinds of source

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

5

Explore the idea

Part 5 of 20

Learn

Primary and secondary

A Roman soldier's letter home is primary: written at the time by someone there. A book about Roman soldiers written this year is secondary: made later, using primary sources. Both are useful, but they are useful in different ways.

6

Explore the idea

Part 6 of 20

Learn

Sources are not only writing

Objects, buildings, coins, bones, maps, paintings and place names are all sources. For long stretches of the past, objects are all we have, because nobody wrote anything down that survived.

7

Quick check

Part 7 of 20

Quick check

A Roman soldier's letter written at the time is...

8

Quick check

Part 8 of 20

Quick check

Provenance means...

9

Reset break

Part 9 of 20

Pause

That's sitting 1 of 2 done

Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.

Stop here for now
10

Learning cycle

Part 10 of 20

Learning cycle 2 of 2

Part 2 — Three questions to ask

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

11

Explore the idea

Part 11 of 20

Learn

Three questions, every time

Who made this, and when? Why did they make it? What does it show, and what does it leave out? A grand royal portrait tells you how a king wanted to be seen — which is not the same as how he looked, or how his subjects lived.

12

Explore the idea

Part 12 of 20

Learn

What survives is not everything

Stone lasts, wood rots. Rich people's things were kept, poor people's were used up. So the past looks grander and more male in the evidence than it really was. Good historians say out loud what is missing from the record.

13

Quick check

Part 13 of 20

Quick check

Why does more evidence survive about rich people?

14

Quick check

Part 14 of 20

Quick check

A royal portrait mainly shows...

15

Investigate evidence

Part 15 of 20

Evidence 1 of 1

primary

Census returns for England and Wales

Government enumerators and householders, Every ten years from 1841

Household lists giving names, ages, jobs and birthplaces, street by street, for the whole country.

The census was collected to govern, not to help historians, which is why it records ordinary families that no other source mentions.

Think like a historian

The census gives a job but not a wage. What can it tell you about a street, and what can it never tell you?

Source: The National Archives, education and research guides

View the archive record ↗
16

Common mix-ups

Part 16 of 20

Common mix-ups

Things people often get wrong

  • Thinking primary sources are always true. People at the time had reasons to shape what they said.
  • Thinking only writing counts as a source.
  • Forgetting that what survived is only a small, uneven slice of the past.
17

Challenge round

Part 17 of 20

Game · Sort it

Which of these are true?

Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.

True

Not true

18

Challenge round

Part 18 of 20

Game · Fill the gaps

Finish the sentences

Choose the word that belongs in each gap.

A Roman soldier's letter home is ____: written at the time by someone there.

A book about Roman soldiers written this year is secondary: made later, using primary ____.

19

Mastery quiz

Part 19 of 20

No quiz for this one

This lesson has no marked quiz attached yet.

20

Lesson round-up

Part 20 of 20

Lesson round-up

Ready when you are

Quiz score

Not sat

Games

Not played

Points this lesson

0

Best run

0 in a row

Luna: 0 out of 4 on the practice checks. Only if you feel up to it — one more?

Ask Luna

Do the work

Your written work for this lesson

This is the part you'd do in your book at school. Pick the pieces below, write here or on paper, and photograph anything you draw or work out.

Source

A factory inspector's notebook, 1842

"I visited the mill at seven in the morning. The machines were already running. I counted fourteen children at the frames, the youngest no more than nine years of age. The overseer told me they work from six until seven, with forty minutes for dinner."

"The air is thick with cotton dust and the windows are kept shut so the thread does not break. Two of the children showed me hands cut by the shuttles. The owner assured me that the work is light and that the families beg him for the places, since without the children's wages the rent cannot be paid."

"I have written to the magistrates. I doubt much will follow from it."

Original source-style text written for Good Learning Co.

Reading questions

  1. Who wrote this, when, and why might that make it useful to a historian?
  2. What does the source tell you about children's work — and what does it not tell you?
  3. How far does this source show that mill owners were to blame? Answer with a judgement and evidence.

Source for this lesson

Use this for the source work task below.

Census returns for England and Wales

primary

Government enumerators and householders, Every ten years from 1841

Household lists giving names, ages, jobs and birthplaces, street by street, for the whole country.

The census was collected to govern, not to help historians, which is why it records ordinary families that no other source mentions.

Source: The National Archives, education and research guides

View the original record ↗

  • Source work

    Reading

    Read the source closely. Write who made it, when, and what it tells you — then what it does not tell you.

    2 paragraphs

  • Essay answer

    Writing

    Answer the enquiry question with a clear judgement. Use two pieces of evidence and finish with a sentence that weighs them up.

    300–400 words

  • Timeline

    Diagram

    Draw a timeline of the events in this lesson with dates, then photograph it.

    6–8 events

Saved as you type.

Part 1 of 20 · Introduction

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