History

At our school, our young historians will gain a deep, well-rounded and chronologically coherent understanding of local, national and internationally significant periods, events and historical aspects.

Our pupils will leave us feeling inspired and curious to find out even more. We will support them to do this by building awareness of both their own heritage and that of the wider world, and by equipping them with the essential historical skills that can be used and applied across all domains of history in future learning.

We will deliver an ambitious, motivating and knowledge-rich curriculum that:

• Gives children a deep chronological understanding of the UK and the local area, including its interactions with the wider world.
• Systematically develops a wide and deep understanding of historical substantive concepts, such as invasion, peasant and democracy.
• Uses timelines to support organisation of substantive knowledge of key events and time periods.
• Exposes children to significant ancient civilisations, empires and non-European societies.
• Draws connections between different aspects of local, regional, national and international history.
• Develops a wide and deep historical vocabulary.
• Uses and applies important concepts and skills, such as cause and effect, similarity and difference, chronology and interpretation of different historical sources.
• Allows children to understand methods of historical enquiry and develop critical thinking.

In the Early Years, the History curriculum is taught via a focus on the ‘Past and Present’ stand of the Early Years Framework ‘Understanding the World’ learning pathway. It includes looking at family, making comparisons between story characters of the past and the roles of the people around them in society.

This process of knowledge acquisition then continues in Key Stage 1 with foci including local history, how toys have changed over time, kings and queens, and the Great Fire of London. This component learning is undertaken whilst pupils also build their historical vocabulary and slowly enrich their chronological schema. Children learn to ask questions, use different sources and begin to understand that the past can be represented in different ways.

In Key Stage 2, pupils’ chronological frameworks are further developed, at a local, national and international level. This includes a range of foci, including the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Ancient Egypt, the Greeks and World War 2. Whilst developing this wider chronological understanding of History, our children build and add to timelines through the year groups to ensure they can reference and refer to events from prior learning.

Our children’s historical skills are developed by recognising connections, contrasts and trends over time, using historical terms, analysing causes and historical significance. Here, we carefully map the careful long-term curriculum sequencing of these essential historical skills and concepts. For example, in Key Stage 1, our children identify simple similarities and differences between life in different periods. In upper Key Stage 2, children then make detailed observations of differences and changes within and across time periods, evaluating the importance of these changes within the context of wider history.