ABSTRACT
Young children need to be able to sort photographs, pictures and artefacts into sets and later to make Venn diagrams in order to discuss increasingly complex questions about time and change, similarity and difference and to justify their reasons. The concepts of history and teaching approaches at key stages 2 and 3 project funded by the economic and social research council, investigated the development of children's understanding of cause and effect in detail. Older children can construct their own timelines of periods they have studied, based on information they have found out, either individually or as a class, perhaps each child writing on a card an explanatory note about a photocopied illustration and hanging these from the ceiling in chronological sequence. Chronology is a framework within which to explore the time changes, and primary school children can engage in this process, at different levels, but they need guidance in how to do it.
