Teaching Primary History through Objects

Each course provides five hours of NESA Registered PD.

This professional development day for primary teachers explores practical ways to teach skills and concepts through object-based learning strategies.

Museum experts demonstrate how to build narratives from objects and how to research objects and their contexts online. Participants will be taken through these successful object-based strategies and undertake brainstorming sessions to enrich and adapt their existing History lessons in similar ways.  

Participants will gain firsthand experience as students, being prompted to build their own understanding of the past by using the evidence of objects to answer a historical inquiry question.  

Participants will receive a range of handouts, reading material and references to support them in implementing object-based learning strategies in the classroom.

The course includes:

Object-based learning

• The value of using object-based learning to teach History
• Dr Fiona Starr (Curator, Hyde Park Barracks Museum): Building a narrative from objects

Planning object-based activities for the classroom

• Mapping possible applications
• Designing an object-based lesson or learning sequence
• Alignment to K-10 History syllabus

Strategies for researching objects and their context

• Dr Matthew Stephens (Research Librarian, Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection): Researching objects and their contexts online
• Application to teaching programs
• Resources to support the use of object-based learning in implementing the K-10 History syllabus

Curriculum links:

History K-10 syllabus

Historical concepts and skills

• Continuity and change
• Analysis and use of sources
• Research
• Explanation and communication