Knowhow Ed Primary History and Geography Network: Meeting 1

Primary History and Geography Network

Welcome to the Knowhow Ed Primary History and Geography Network! Join us online once a month for a fun and interactive event where you can connect with fellow educators, share ideas, and learn new strategies for teaching history and geography to primary students. Whether you're a subject leader, seasoned teacher or just starting out, this event is perfect for anyone looking to enhance their teaching of these subjects. Register now and be a part of our network!

Meeting: October 6th 2025

This meeting will explore ways to make the abstract concepts of size/space in Geography and time/duration in history, concrete and accessible for children. Both involve an understanding of scale, whether physical or temporal. Come along to share ideas and get access to practical tools and activities to try in your classroom.

History

'Miss, how long is a long time ago?' 'Were there dinosaurs in the Stone Age? ' 'My Dad’s car is really bumped and mucky so does it come from the past?'

Most young children lack any sense of historical scale: anything more than a few weeks will be viewed as ‘long ago’! So how can we deal with questions such as these? Come along to explore how to break down the process of learning about time to make it more accessible for young learners, accelerating pupils’ chronological understanding using strategies designed to address common difficulties and misconceptions.

Geography

From the very start of Key Stage 1, the national curriculum asks learners to compare countries. But can they picture the size of the UK’s nations? Without a sense of scale, logging in the Amazon or population density in different regions can feel abstract and distant. With the right tools and resources, you can make these comparisons real, relatable, and memorable for your pupils.

Because perspective changes everything.

Who is Knowhow Ed?

KnowhowEd is directed by Julie McGrane and Anne Echevarria.

We have spent much of our careers exploring ways of helping learners develop the skills and dispositions required to think and learn effectively. We draw on a range of teaching thinking and enquiry-based approaches such as Project Based Learning, Philosophy for Children, Visible Thinking and Thinking Moves - to name just a few.

From these we bring:

• an understanding of how to develop children's ability to think together and think for themselves - and develop the language of reasoning for doing so;
• an awareness of the importance of analogy and story in helping children explore abstract concepts;
• a wealth of strategies to help learners explore the 'big ideas' that underpin learning in different subject areas;
• expertise in facilitating the sort of metacognitive learning conversations that embed deeper understanding;
• a desire to infuse learning with real world authenticity and relevance.