English and literacy can be successfully linked to most other curriculum areas, as language is an agent of all learning, but for me (discounting drama which really is part of English) the most fruitful and sympathetic possibilities lie with history. The first point to make is that history is essentially a literate activity which involves establishing evidence and communicating ideas. Thus it provides a natural context for particular kinds of discussion, reading and writing. This richness of textual material connects it to the Literacy Time and to the National Curriculum English programmes. Second an ‘English’ perspective, often achieved through the use of narrative or drama, can help children begin to understand about the circumstances and lives of people living in a particular period. This analysis starts by looking at non-fiction texts and then at story as a way of bringing the past ‘alive’ for young historians.
Non-fiction texts for history include primary sources like letters, diaries, documents, inventories and report and secondary sources, for example information and reference books, both print and electronic, autobiographies and biographies. (For a thorough guide to written sources for history see Blyth and Hughes, 1997.) The same non-fiction text might be used in history to increase historical understanding and in the Literacy Hour to learn about the linguistic features of a kind of writing. So, to give a specific example, a letter sent to a young girl by her soldier brother during the Second World War could be studied for evidence about historical events in history and as an example of informal language in the Literacy Hour (see Letters to Henrietta by Nell Marshall, Cambridge University Press).
There are fruitful connections in the other direction as well. For example older primary children who have worked as readers and writers on journalistic kinds of writing in English are well placed to evaluate newspaper sources in history.
Autobiography and biography can be used in both English and history and publishers are commissioning biographies for children to meet Literacy Time objectives. These introduce children to literary kinds of non-fiction and to the photographs and other illustrations of lives of people in the past. Ginn have published a series of biographies on figures like Mary Seacole, Alfred the Great and Boudicca. ‘In Grandma’s Day’ (Evans series) has firsthand accounts of ordinary women describing their lives in the 1930s and 1940s. For further suggestions of examples of stories about historical figures and about ordinary people, see under the ‘biography’ entry.
When it comes to children’s writing, we need to help them begin to control explanation and argument. Research in Australian schools during the 1980s and 1990s suggested that history teaching could be too reliant on recount genres with a narrative structure and urged that other genres should be encouraged, including explanation and argument (Martin et al., 1987).
Nevertheless, story forms in all their variety are a powerful meeting place for history and English. Teachers have known for a long time that novels, short stories and picture books set in the past can help develop historical knowledge and understanding. When a story is carefully chosen and read out loud with vitality and conviction, it will appeal to young imaginations and draw the children into a sequence of events, encouraging curiosity and discussion. Some stories bring part of the past alive in different cultures and periods in a way children can understand (Fisher, 2004). The feelings and motivations of all kinds of people are revealed and children can also be helped to gain a vocabulary to talk about events and issues in history. Children can enjoy the historical aspects of stories from a very early age: Nursery and Reception children are fascinated by the settings, objects and clothes in the Ahlbergs’ picture book set in the 1940s – Peepo (Penguin, 1981). Two stories, both by Martin Waddell, The Toymaker and Grandma’s Bill, explore differences between the generations. For age seven and above some of the books in the many ‘history through story’ series publishers produce give a strong sense of lives lived in particular situations and periods through narrative and illustration. For example George Buchanan’s Kidnap on the Canal tells the story of a boat boy in the nineteenth century and ends with factual notes (1999, Franklin Watts Sparks series). Older primary children both learn about history and enjoy the language and drama of powerful novels like Rosemary Sutcliff’s – Dragonslayer; The Eagle of the Ninth and the many novels by Leon Garfield, Joan Aiken and Robert Westall (see more about this under ‘Historical novel’ and ‘History of children’s literature’). Then there are the stories of the past which children can be helped to create themselves. Gordon Wells describes and evaluates a project carried out by ten year olds who were celebrating the centenary of their school through historical research, drama, writing and painting. One of the most successful activities was making stories for dramatic presentation about life in a school in the late nineteenth century (Wells, 1986, p. 206). This same imaginative reconstruction of the past through careful historical research and story telling is a major theme in the work of Kieron Egan (1986).
While history and English can combine to good effect they are separate areas of knowledge and understanding. Some of the differences in emphasis when we use stories for history and stories for English are quite subtle and worth looking at in a little more detail. In the analysis which follows, I draw on the case study used by Kath Cox and Pat Hughes in their chapter ‘History and children’s fiction’ in History and English (Hoodless, 1998). They share with us some work with Year 2 children round Sarah Garland’s Seeing Red – a children’s picture book set in the eighteenth century and based on a legend that may be partially true (Anderson Press, 1996). It tells the story of Trewenna, a Cornish girl, who saves her village from invasion by the French. She manages this by persuading the other women to join her in showing their red petticoats from the cliff tops to deceive the French soldiers into thinking English redcoat soldiers are lying in ambush. The plan succeeds and Napoleon Bonaparte commands his invasion fleet to return to France.
A major contribution that stories make in history is to support children’s developing understanding of chronology through sequencing. So, as is the case in Seeing Red, pictures and written text tell of a series of events with pace and energy. This story is set at an identifiable historical time but the teacher needs to reinforce its historical aspects. To understand the events in Seeing Red children have to know that England was at war with France two hundred years ago, that Napoleon Bonaparte was a real person and that people used objects like bellows and candlesticks and wore a particular style of clothing. If this story were being used in an English lesson, it would be the power of the story, the characterisation and the language choices made by the author that would be paramount.
What about the significance of the illustrations in picture books used for each subject area? In Seeing Red they are integrated into the telling of the events and are a source of insight into aspects of the historical period – landscapes, interiors, dress and distinctive objects. The children in the history case study were shown other pictures including a reproduction of a water colour painting of soldiers in the red uniforms worn at the time. Talk about the illustrations in English would tend to centre on how the pictures added to the dramatic power of the plot and extended our understanding of the qualities of the characters revealed in the written text.
The language of a story or picture book is important in both history and English, but in different ways. In history children need to learn some of the language of the period: historical vocabulary like ‘musket’ and ‘flintlock pistols’ is used in Seeing Red.
When the children commented that ‘Old Boney’ was ‘a skitting name’, the teacher helped them see the motivation behind this use of a nickname: people try to make fun of their enemies to reduce their terror. In English we would be interested in the effect of choices the author made in vocabulary, syntax, use of direct and indirect speech and choice of ‘person’ and tense. We would also want to think about the use of language devices like alliteration and use of imagery like simile and metaphor. Think of the power of these images of the petticoats and socks in Seeing Red’ – ‘as red as cocks’ combs, as red as holly berries, as red as a robin’s breast…as red as the jackets of redcoat soldiers’.
Blyth, Joan and Hughes, Pat (1997) Using Written Sources in Primary History London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Egan, Kieron (1986) Teaching as Story Telling: an alternative approach to teaching and curriculum in the elementary school London, Ontario: The Althouse Press.
Fisher, J. (2004). ‘Historical fiction’, in Hunt, P. (ed.) International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature London and New York: Routledge.
Hoodless, Pat (ed.) (1998) History and English: Exploiting the Links London: Routledge.
Martin, J., Christie, F. and Rothery, J. (1987) ‘Social processes in education: a reply to Sawyer and Watson (and others), in Reid, I. (ed.) The Place of Genre in Learning. Victoria: Deakin University.
Wells, Gordon (1986) ‘Stories across the curriculum’ pp. 206–13 in The Meaning Makers: children learning language and using language to learn London: Hodder & Stoughton.
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