Part of Salford Community Leisure clock icon Open Today 10:00am - 4:00pm Accessibility and Language Tools

We have worked with a number of secondary schools in Salford through the Digital Salford project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Teachers have reported being unsure where to start with including more local history in their lessons. We have responded to this by piloting some work with KS1 classes around the city to inform how we develop new learning resources to support the new history curriculum.

Curriculum areas supported

Key Stage 3

  • Pupils understanding how different types of historical sources are used rigorously to make historical claims
  • Ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-1901
  • Challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world 1901 to the present day
  • A local history study

Local history may also support other subjects including geography, citizenship, art and literacy, and be used in cross-circular work.

Needs identified by teachers include:

  • Photographs to show various aspects of life in inner city Salford about 100 years ago
  • A range of photographs that would provide some local examples on the themes of sport, leisure and tourism
  • Some ideas for how photographs could be used in lessons
  • Some examination style questions incorporating local images
  • An opportunity for a group of high ability pupils to be involved actively in local history research
  • A desire to teach about Salford 100 years ago to reflect the centenary commemorations of World War One but a lack of resources for this topic
  • Some ideas for homework activities that make use of photographs and other sources of information from outside school, such as old buildings and the memories of older people

The piloted activities and outputs include:

  • Electronic photographs produced for schools under headings including Cinema, Music, Outings, Jobs, Shops, Streets, Transport, World War One and Sport
  • Lesson plan produced for how a class could use these photographs in a lesson
  • Several examination style questions produced using local images
  • Learning session (using photos as historical evidence) for Year 8 pupils at Salford Local History Library, exploring the photograph collection and selecting images to help answer historical questions
  • Subject leaders for history have visited photograph collections
  • Homework booklets produced using ideas and materials supplied, with tasks produced on changes in local shops and changes in local transport over time

Resources and Support Available

Digital Salford website launched in autumn 2015, which allows users to search thousands of photographs of Salford from the past 100 years. We encourage teachers to use this resource to gather local history material to support classroom teaching, historical enquiry and the creation of new activities, lesson plans and worksheets. We also encourage teachers to share any new resources that use our local history photographs with us, so that other teachers can be inspired by this work.

For more information or to submit new resources please contact Naomi Lewis at naomi.lewis@scll.co.uk.

The Salford Local History Library is home to over 70,000 photographs of the city, as well as newspaper archives, maps, electoral registers, trade directories, pamphlets and a wealth of local history material. Appointments can be made with the Local History Librarian to get you started with finding resources, please call Duncan McCormick on 0161 778 0814.