Words and ideas for the past and the future

A picture of me drawn by a student who is now in Year 11. Her name is Emma.

Dear Year 7 students,

You will have encountered most or perhaps all of the words below in the first week of studying history. But even if you know a particular word, that doesn’t always mean that you fully understand it and could use it in a sentence, during class or in a test. That’s why it’s often useful to revisit strange or unfamiliar words, just to make sure they have become friends and allies in your mental dictionary.

I made up the quizlet below to help my students use the words of history in everyday life. You know, at the dinner table, when your parents ask you that dreaded question: “And what did you learn at school today?”

Reconstruction of a New Stone Age longhouse in Hitzacker, Germany

After you have worked through this quizlet a few times, you’ll be able to reply: “Well, since you ask, I discovered that once the glaciers of the last Ice Age had melted, the area of the Fertile Crescent was an ideal location for the gradual development of agriculture. The hunter-gatherers who lived there gradually gave up their nomadic lifestyle and took up farming, domesticating plants and animals and beginning to live in larger settlements with more complex social structures. This change had a lasting impact on human history.”

Your parents will be stunned.

“And now,” you will say, “if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and brush up my extensive vocabulary  before I go to bed. May I be excused?”

Of course your parents will release you. They’ll be speechless. They may even forget to make you do the washing up.

Good luck.

Kind regards from Ms Green