The relevance of the study stems from the drawbacks in the state program in the Russian language within the system of training primary school teachers which does not provide for learning the history of the Russian language. Meanwhile, lots of linguistic phenomena studied at primary school may be explained if teachers and children simply know the history of the language, and not just learn meaningless data by heart.In this regard, the article aims at grounding the necessity of not only synchronic but also a diachronic study of the Russian language by future primary school teachers.The leading method of the research on this issue is the experiment being carried out at the faculty of primary education of Moscow State Pedagogical University. The authors have worked out the course "Fundamentals of the history of the Russian language". The course has been introduced in the section of the program named "elective courses". In total, about 150 students have participated in mastering the course over the two years. In this article, the authors also prove the necessity of creating a special teaching aid for students of the faculty of primary education.The technology developed by the authors promotes better training for the modern teacher of the primary school. The authors believe that the main result of the course is training of a mindful teacher-researcher, broadening of the mind. The teacher who can state the problematic issue and the teacher who is trying to penetrate deep into the essence of the phenomenon should be prepared for modern schools. The teacher should be able to deliver knowledge to students.

Russian language history, historical alternations, orthogram, primary school, history of the language