Chronological Knowledge and Understanding

I discussed chronological understanding many times, from workshops at the first SHP conference in 1989 onwards, and this page provides links to articles and activities aimed at both KS2 and KS3.

The core article, Developing Students’ Chronological Knowledge and Understanding was written in 2022 to summarise my main thoughts and divided into three sections (the third by far the longest):

1. Defining chronological knowledge and understanding

2. Identifying the ‘takeaways’ about chronology to be aimed for by the end of KS3.

3. Planning and teaching how to students to understand those takeaways

In the introduction, I also identified two crucial starting points. The first is that developing students’ chronological knowledge and understanding is complex and multi-layered, involving far, far more than simply teaching events in chronological order. The second is that we get nowhere if we don’t build teaching around identifying and countering students’ misconceptions, what they think is involved in chronological knowledge and understanding and why it’s important.

You can find this lengthy core article at the top of the list of articles below.

Below the articles are some of the activities and resources that will help develop students’ knowledge and understanding.

Core Article:

Developing Students’ Chronological Knowledge and Understanding

The core article, written in 2022, summarising my main conclusions.

It’s 28 pages long and contains numerous teaching examples and suggestions

Additional Articles

Developing Chronological Understanding at KS2

Notes, based on workshops for teachers in primary schools, which set out some of the major issues involved in developing chronological understanding

Building explicit understanding of historical periods into KS3 planning

A discussion of ways of helping students understand the nature of historical periods, how this contributes to their chronological understanding and what understandings students could take away from KS3 for use at GCSE and later.

Thinking across time: Planning and teaching the story of power and democracy across KS3

Published in Teaching History in 2007, this article explores how coherent planning across KS3 can help build chronological knowledge and understanding

Time for Chronology?

Published in Teaching History in 2004, this article has been superceded by the ideas in the core article from 2022 above but is included here as an introduction to the ideas.

Diachronic Dancing

Written by Alan Kelly and published in The Welsh Historian in 2004 this article explores both research into students’ chronological understanding and teaching suggestions arising from that research.

Top of the page

Activities and Resources

This list introduces activities and resources which help develop chronological understanding.

The Big Human Timeline	A very effective individual activity for building a sense of the chronology at KS2, KS3 and beyond - until it’s no longer needed
Making sense of BC and AD	How to tackle a common problem – why are years beginning with 13 in the fourteenth century?
Wine Gums, Timelines and Really Big Overviews	Created by Catherine McCrory, this activity is guaranteed to stretch and develop chronological understanding on a very broad scale
Using family generations to link back to past events	Create timelines using generations to enhance students’ sense of duration
Timelines for Understanding Duration	Examples covering the Roman period, Saxons and Vikings, did Queen Victoria’s reign last longer than Granny? and other topics
Is Granny Well Old?	How Esther Arnott uses Granny to develop a sense of duration as far back as the Romans
Timelines, Time-Stories and developing confidence at A level	The use of timelines and time-stories to develop an overview of the chronology and content of a new module
Having Fun Through Time	A guide to structuring an enquiry at KS2 into what people did for fun, covering 2000 years from the Roman period to today, and helping to develop pupils’ sense of chronology
Who would you most like to meet at the Year 7 party?	An end of year party which reinforces chronological knowledge – repeat for Years 8 and 9!
Which Big Events were most Important in KS3 History?	An end of course overview activity, a last opportunity to embed chronological knowledge and understanding

PLUS …

There are also resources on numerous individual topics across time which will help develop students’ sense of chronology – topics such as population, power and democracy, warfare, living standards in everyday life, monarchy etc.