Intent
Our History Curriculum seeks to give pupils a solid foundation and broad overview into some of the most important periods, events and themes in British and World History. Through this, we aim to develop all pupils into confident historians, in terms of what they know, how they think and the way they communicate with others.
We want our pupils to be conscious, to ensure our curriculum reflects our school’s demographic and draws from knowledge, stories and histories within our local cultures and heritages. Celebrating diversity and promoting equality are qualities we aim to foster by critically analysing events and understanding History from varying perspectives.
Our pupils should be able to explain, analyse, compare and contrast historical events, significant people justifying why they prefer one and not the other.
Implementation
In EYFS, well-considered continuous provision is used to engage pupils through activities involving the past and present. For example, comparing toys from the past and now.
While using the National Curriculum as a guide, we have a well-designed and sequenced History Curriculum that is based on vocabulary development, research, oracy and the application of knowledge and skills. We use primary and secondary sources of evidence to enable pupils to construct informed responses and develop a reasoned criticality.
Our teachers plan History lessons following well-sequenced learning journeys, which begin with a Knowledge Harvest enabling teachers to identify what pupils already know and understand and to reveal misconceptions. This is also an opportunity to review and activate prior learning, which supports children to work with new information, in order to add to their long-term memory.
To bring History to life, we use a range of historical artefacts for hands-on experience, educational visits to the British Museum, Childhood Museum to support the learning. History is enriched for all pupils through workshops delivered by the ‘History Off the Page’. They use experienced facilitators who specialise in different aspects of Historical events and periods. These special History Days are very engaging and popular. The workshops support experiential learning, giving pupils opportunities to enact historical events and immersing them in what life was like in the past.
 |
 |
Impact
Our pupils understand the process of change( past and now), diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, the challenges each era faced as a way of promoting inclusion and respect in our school and community.
Our pupils make historical enquiries, gather the necessary information, analyse the information and present the information, thereby enhancing their communication skills.
High-quality displays are used to celebrate a wide range of outcomes, progress and the breadth and depth of Historical knowledge and skills. Discussions with pupils show an appreciation of History, enjoyment and use of historical vocabulary such as “Empire” “Civilisation”“ Parliament”.
By providing opportunities for pupils to apply their knowledge and skills within applicable historical contexts, we deepen their understanding and foster independent thinking while assessing learning and progress.
