Creative History

Emotional Literacy

Using Historical Empathy to Teach Emotional Literacy

Presented by: Patricia Silver-Warner MA(PrimEd) BA(Hons) QT

Imagine being able to use humanity subjects to deliver and reinforce at least 50% of your emotional literacy teaching. Having lessons that because they teach good effective history skills automatically introduce and reinforce emotional literacy skills. Whether you are looking for ways to increase your teaching repertoire to keep pace with school initiatives or even to be a little a head or their introduction this course is for you.

Summary of Course Content

"History is all about people and their reactions to events. Feelings and emotions are central to understanding this. Developing Emotional Literacy through your history teaching looks at a series of practical class room techniques for teaching historical empathy skills that also develop emotional literacy vocabulary and strategies. These exercises are as relevant to year 1 as to an adult when finding out about the past. The chain of events needed to help children develop the skill to recognise their emotional state and alter it is set against the context of developing good historical enquiry skills. This course is aimed at class teachers and senior members of staff with an interest in developing emotional literacy skills."

Who is this course designed for?

This course is as valuable for the class teacher as the subject co-ordinator. As to which subject co-ordinators? History co-ordinators and members of staff with pastoral or behaviour issues under their remit (such as SENcos, Pastoral Coordinators, or Senior Management). Other subject leaders that may find this course useful are Geography or Humanity Coordinators. Staff with PSHE and Citizenship responsibilities may also find the ideas from this course useful. (The National Curriculum might say Citizenship starts at KS3 however any school trying to develop a positive learning environment knows it starts much, much earlier.)

This course is written with non-specialists in mind. It is accessible to Teachers, Learning Support Assistants and Governors. People with an interest in developing emotional literacy activities within the classroom or whole school setting will find this course useful.

Programme for the Day

The activities for the day start with a quick overview of Emotional literacy followed by a more in-depth look at why history teaching is such a good vehicle for delivering emotional literacy. This theoretical foundation is then placed against history-based activities. Teachers experience different activities to familiarise themselves with how the activities may be used in the classroom. Time is given to reflect how some or all the activities can be woven into the history curriculum. And the day ends with the chance to discuss individual issues or related subjects.

The programme below is a skeleton of a typical day. Timings are a guide; where possible more time is given to the practical activities. The examples given reflect typical primary phase history topics. It would help if attendees would let me know in advance any particular topics they use e.g. Victorian childhood or Florence Nightingale.

9:00 - 9:30 Grab a coffee, registration and settling.

9:30 - 10:00 Session 1: Teaching Emotional Literacy - Stages of development - How children view the process - Why using a neutral focus help - Questions.

10:00 - 10:30 Session 2: How History and Emotional Literacy Support Each Other - What is history - Qualities of good historians - The common ground - Why use history teaching as a springboard. - Questions.

10:30 Comfort Break

11:00 - 12:15 Session 3: Getting used to the lingo! - Building the language - Scoring reactions - Reaction + action = positive result.

12:15 Lunch

1:15 - 2:30 Session 4: Applying the knowledge - Feelings can be different - playing the roles - Conflict management - seeing the other side - Changing the story.

2:30 Comfort Break

2:45 - 3:30 Session 5: Planning where to go next - From small acorns oaks grow - Possible approaches to using this approach - What's your plan - Adapting activities to suit your needs.

3:30 - 4:00 Session 6: Let's talk (or Leg it and go!) - Discuss ideas - Explore related issues

Why Patricia to present the course?

Taking a step back from years of teaching emotional literacy skills to develop Creative History allowed Patricia the time to reflect on the History Curriculum and its delivery. An advocate of active learning in History, she realised that a change of emphasis of some of these activities enables them to readily develop emotional literacy skills without losing their benefit in developing historical skills. In fact the change is likely to enhance historical understanding.

Realising the potential benefits to classroom teaching in terms of saving curriculum time, creating much needed over learning opportunities, matching learning styles, developing higher order thinking skills and making history teaching a more active process she went back over the successful activities of the past years and rewrote them in terms of history based activities. The result is a range of activities that sit comfortably within the history curriculum. They can be used to facilitate development of historical and emotional literacy skills within a class. Used consistently across year groups they can build towards a whole school programme. Or, where a behaviour issue relating to emotional literacy difficulties has been identified, they can be added into the curriculum to support that child's needs within the classroom setting without disadvantaging the other children.

Dates Available

27/03/06 Salisbury, Full-Day

23/05/06 Salisbury, Full-Day

05/07/06 Cosham, Full-Day

Interested but venue or date is inconvenient?

Ask us! If the date you have in mind is free and a venue can be found we may well be able to come to you.

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