Famous People: Florence Nighingale (KS1)

Teachers Notes (21 KB)
Resources (20 KB)
Florence Nightingale pupils work (411 KB)
More information on download times and Resource Viewers

One of the History units in the QCA scheme of work is called "Why do we remember Florence Nightingale?". This unit looks at her life, why she went to the Crimea, and what happened as a result of her work. It builds on previous units by focusing on the way of life of a famous person who lived at the time before living memory, and it also contributes to cross-curricular work that the children covered last year, on 'People who help us'.
I wanted to use the QCA scheme as a framework, and interpret it in the light of teaching ideas from the Nuffield Literacy and History course we'd done at Sefton.
In the unit on Florence Nightingale, my aim was to be able to stretch and challenge all children, regardless of their ability, whilst teaching literacy (particularly oracy) skills through history. I wanted to provide children with an in-depth focus so that they would be able to remember it more clearly. Having said this, I did not feel particularly inspired by the topic myself, but I decided to try to incorporate into the teaching of the unit some ideas which I had come across on the Nuffield course. I was keen to see if it would be possible to meet both History and Literacy learning objectives.

by Sandra Parry