Intent:

Our History curriculum, starting in Nursery and culminating in Year 6, aims to ensure a secure understanding of chronology, significant historical periods, key figures (past and present) and how history has shaped modern society. We aim to stimulate children’s curiosity about the past and encourage them to develop an appreciation and understanding of the past. Our aim is to help pupils understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change and the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups. This helps children gain a sense of their own identity within a social, political, cultural and economic background.

Our curriculum has been designed to ensure full coverage of the disciplinary skills and substantive knowledge as set out in the National Curriculum whilst ensuring representation for our pupils through the texts we use and the individuals we choose to study. Our curriculum encourages our children to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments and develop perspective and judgement.

Implementation:

The National Curriculum is used to plan and deliver history content in a systematic and progressive way. Our History curriculum has been constructed around key concepts to ensure that history is taught in a spiral manner and is progressive. History begins with pupils learning about themselves and chronology. A consistent timeline, blocked into periods is displayed in classrooms for pupils to refer to, revisit and consolidate their learning of chronology and key periods. In all lessons, we enable pupils to make connections, revise and recap previous history units taught through the use of retrieval practice strategies and KWL grids.

Where appropriate, representation has been carefully considered so that learning is relatable, links are evident for the pupils and knowledge can be retained more effectively. Each topic has an overarching enquiry question which the pupils answer at the end of the topic. Each lesson has a Question for Learning that is designed to support the pupils in answering the overarching enquiry question. Our lessons develop the following skills and characteristics to help them become confident learners:

• Knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past.
• Ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently.
• Ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others views using historical evidence from a range of sources.
• Ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
• Respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning.
• Desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of topics.
• Develop a sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.

Impact:

Our History curriculum equips our children with the appropriate skills and knowledge to take their history learning beyond the classroom. Exposure to subject specific vocabulary supports them to articulate their understanding of taught concepts. Pupils become increasingly aware of how historical events have shaped the world that they currently live in and develop a critical and analytical way of thinking, enhancing the skills to make informed and balanced judgements based on their knowledge of the past.

The impact of the curriculum will be evidenced through:

• High-quality learning.
• Learning walks, book looks and pupil voice.
• Pupil progress data.