Key Stage Stories
Short history films for British primary classrooms. Made for Key Stage 2, and checked before they are made.
Short history films for British primary classrooms. Made for Key Stage 2, and checked before they are made.
For teachers
Each film is about five minutes and tells one story properly, from start to finish. No quiz stings, no shouting, no cartoon Vikings in horned helmets.
They are built to sit inside a lesson: play one as the input, then move to your own activity. Every film is written against the National Curriculum programme of study and is checked against museum and academic sources before a word is recorded.
Free downloads
Nothing to sign up for and nothing to pay. Print them, copy them, put them in your planning.
Film 2 · two A4 pages
Front page for pupils: choosing where a family would build and why, vocabulary matching for thatch, wattle and daub, hall and hearth, the endings -ham, -ton and -ford with a calculation about sixty grandmothers, and a writing task that asks for expanded noun phrases. Back page for you: answers, curriculum links, the timestamp each question comes from, and the two things the film is careful about.
Download the worksheet (PDF)Film 1 · two A4 pages
Front page for pupils: a timeline to complete (with two calculations), vocabulary matching, a cause-and-effect question on why land made the warriors stay, and a writing task that asks for a fronted adverbial. Back page for you: answers, curriculum links, the timestamp each question comes from, and the three things the film is careful about.
Download the worksheet (PDF)Whole unit · one A4 page
Key questions, a timeline from 410 to 1066, the people to know, the Danelaw, and the vocabulary pupils need. Print double-sided for the front of their books and it lasts the whole term.
Download the Knowledge Organiser (PDF)Season 1
Ten films that run in order, from the last Roman soldier leaving Britain to the marks the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings left on the map we use today.
Out now · Film 2
A family walks inland, past the empty Roman towns, and stops at a bend in a river. One man cuts his name into a post at the gate. The timber rots and the post rots, but the name is still there on the road sign at the end of the street.
Watch on YouTubeOut now · Film 1
The Roman army leaves, the raids begin, and a message goes out across the North Sea. Britain has no gold left, so it pays in land — and land is the one kind of pay that makes people stay.
Watch on YouTubeFilms are numbered so they run in order, and the playlist keeps them that way, which makes it straightforward to set as a sequence of lessons. A new film goes up every Friday, with none in half-term week, and the series is complete on 13 November. Film 10 arrives early, on 2 October, because it is the one most often wanted for the end-of-topic task.
Watch the series playlist Subscribe on YouTubeAccuracy
A single wrong fact is enough for a teacher to stop trusting a resource, so the films hedge where the evidence hedges. Vortigern is introduced with the story goes that, because that is all the sources support. No mast has ever been found in an Anglo-Saxon boat of the migration period, so the film says a mast has not been found — not that there were no sails. The Roman army leaves gradually across decades, not by one order on one day.
If you find something wrong, please tell us. It will be fixed and the correction will be named.