Check it! - Homes over time - Year 3

The educational resource from Focus Education explores the evolution of homes through history, specifically designed for Year 3 students. It prompts children to consider and reflect on how residential spaces and domestic life have transformed over the years. The material encourages teachers to incorporate regular review sessions into their lessons, suggesting a variety of interactive strategies such as 'Brain dump!', 'Give me FIVE!', 'Add to my mind map', 'Expand and Elaborate!', and 'Retrieval Pyramids'. These activities are aimed at reinforcing students' retention and understanding of the topic.

One section of the resource asks students to recall five facts about Victorian kitchens and the development of the telephone, illustrating how specific elements of the home have changed. Another part of the material invites students to 'Expand and Elaborate' on the differences between the first televisions in people's homes compared to modern ones, and to consider the absence of microwave ovens during Victorian times. The resource also challenges students with questions about historical food preparation and consumption, such as the practices of hunter-gatherers, food rationing, the dietary habits of wealthy Romans and Tudors, and the origins of allotments for vegetable growing. It even delves into the history of technology with a question about the invention of the telephone and asks for examples of outdated Victorian kitchen utensils. The resource ends with a 'Pyramid Check', a tiered assessment tool to gauge the depth of students' knowledge, with the expectation that all pupils will be able to answer the simpler questions at the base of the pyramid, while the more challenging questions form the upper tiers.