Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London (KS1)

Teachers Notes (19 KB)
Resource A (7 KB)
Resource B (594 KB)
Pupil's Work (476 KB)
More information on download times and Resource Viewers

More on the Great Fire of London: see the right-hand margin

The two sessions described here were the second and third in a seven-week unit looking at the Plague, the Great Fire of London and Samuel Pepys as a famous person. The teaching took place weekly, for half a morning. In the first session the children had posed their own questions about the fire; we had told the story of the fire from Samuel Pepys' perspective; the children had role-played trying to put out the fire with hooks, squirters and buckets of water; and they had examined pictures of said equipment and of London before and during the fire.

Here in the following two sessions, we take the investigation further, through: the reading of genuine historical sources, both pictorial and written; debating causation; and sequencing. The children communicate their understandings through structured writing, individually and in groups.
Note that you need to download resources A and B. Resources B contains pictures of Pepys and the Fire.

by Jacqui Dean