History

Intent

At Middleton St Mary’s CE (VC) Primary school we shape our History curriculum to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum and EYFS statutory requirements. Our intent is to provide a broad, balanced and personalised curriculum that encompasses British Values and provides ambition and challenge, while ensuring it is accessible to all learners. Our History curriculum is fully inclusive for every child.

Through our teaching of history, children will develop a knowledge of local, British and world history. They will learn key factual knowledge and understand historical concepts and abstract terms. We want our historians to enjoy and love learning about history by gaining knowledge and skills. As there is a high percentage of pupil premium children in our school, we aim to give all children more experiences that they may not necessarily have access to outside of school.  We aim for all children to experience educational visits, visitors into school, access to real-life artefacts and practical activities to allow children to fully immerse themselves in the topic. Great importance is given to our history curriculum as we believe this helps to:

• develop an interest in the past and an appreciation of human achievements and aspirations
• develop the skills to be able to link their learning in history to other areas of the curriculum
• learn about the major issues and events in the history of our own country and of the world and how these events may have influenced one another
• instil a curiosity and understanding of events, places and people in a variety of times and environments
• develop a knowledge of chronology within which the children can organise their understanding of the past
• understand how the past was different from the present and that people of other times and places may have had different values and attitudes from ours
• understand how our local area has changed over time and what may have caused those changes, helping children to develop a sense of pride
• understand the nature of evidence by emphasising the process of enquiry and by developing the range of skills required to interpret primary and secondary source materials
• understand the values of our society
• understand that events have a multiplicity of causes and that historical explanation is provisional, debatable and sometimes controversial
• develop historical perspective in various contexts enabling children to understand the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.

Implementation

The timetable and curriculum learning journey for history have been organised to ensure British history in KS2 is followed as chronologically as possible, developing children’s knowledge year on year and enabling teachers to link new learning to previous learning and knowledge. Key concepts, subject vocabulary and knowledge have been clearly mapped out from Nursery to Year 6, based on the requirements of the Early Years Statutory Framework and the National Curriculum with clear links to other subjects carefully built in to provide opportunities to embed knowledge and deepen learning. Historical concepts are taught explicitly as they shape the way substantive knowledge is understood, debated and organised. Through teaching historical concepts, children are provided with opportunities to ask historically valid questions and create structured accounts and analyses. Children are taught how to develop methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, allowing children to discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed. Key knowledge is revisited and reinforced throughout the year. When taught, each area of history in the wider world is compared with British history at that point in time and this is looked at on the class timeline to develop chronological understanding. We ensure the curriculum is not narrowed and is adapted and designed to be ambitious whilst meeting the needs of all pupils including those with a range of SEND needs. Our aim is to ensure that the curriculum develops children’s knowledge, skills and abilities with increasing fluency and independence. Where necessary, a personalised curriculum is implemented. 

Post-assessment questions are used to help teachers inform their future planning and target areas that need to be revisited as well as informing adaptation to both support those who need it and deepen learning, providing ambition for all. Low stake quizzes are utilised to assess prior learning every half term, which allows children to revisit knowledge and embed in their long-term memory in a fun and engaging way. Learning is also supported through the use of knowledge organisers, providing children with scaffolding that supports them to retain new facts and vocabulary in their long-term memory. Knowledge organisers are used for pre-teaching and to support home learning.

History Knowledge Organisers for Autumn

History Knowledge Organisers for Spring

History Knowledge Organisers for Summer