History Curriculum
Intent:
At Our Lady and St. Edward’s we believe that History inspires pupils to want to know more about the past and to think and act like historians. It also stimulates the children’s interest and understanding about the lives of people who lived in the past and their impact on our lives today. The study of history makes a valuable contribution to the children’s understanding of all aspects of life-giving children a sense of identity and heritage. Where possible, History is carefully linked to other subjects across the curriculum providing opportunities to investigate and interpret the past, understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s history as well as the wider world, and to be able to communicate historically. The National Curriculum programmes of study underpins the planning, teaching and learning of history, implemented through a chronological timeline of British History leading to the 21st Century in Year 6.
Implementation:
History teaching at Our Lady and St Edwards Catholic Primary School focuses upon enabling the pupils to begin to think like historians. We use artefacts, primary and secondary sources, ICT and visits to sites of historical significance. We invite visitors to school to talk about their experiences of events in the past to support and enhance their learning. We teach children to understand that historical events can be interpreted in different ways and we teach the children to ask searching questions about the information they are given and to ask the key question ‘How do we know?
We recognise that in all classes there are children widely differing in abilities in history and we seek to provide all children with suitable learning opportunities by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this by differentiating in a variety of ways:
- Setting common tasks which are open ended and can have a variety of responses
- Setting challenging extension activities
- Providing resources of different complexity
- Encouraging pupils of differing abilities to work co-operatively in groups and to support each other
- Deployment of teaching assistants to support pupils individually or in groups
Inclusion
History lessons are adapted to meet the needs of all pupils including those pupils with special educational needs. Through our history teaching we provide adapted learning opportunities that enable all pupils to make progress. We do this by setting suitable learning challenges and responding to each child’s different needs. Assessment is made through the national curriculum. Where pupils are to participate in activities outside the classroom, for example to an archaeological dig, we carry out a risk assessment prior to the activity taking place, to ensure that the activity is safe and appropriate for the pupil's age and stage of development.
Impact:
Pupil interviews, learning walks, regular quizzes and work in pupils’ books evidence a broad and balanced History curriculum. These show a progression of key substantive and disciplinary knowledge relating to the historical concepts and abstract terms identified within the National Curriculum for History. EYFS pupils are exposed to the Early Learning Goal of Understanding the World (Past and Present) and exhibit a growing knowledge of similarities and differences between things in the past and now, drawing on their own experiences. Our youngest pupils are able to develop an understanding of the past through settings, characters and events. They are able to make sense of their own life story and family history, Pupils develop a coherent, chronological narrative of the past, with units of work that have strong links to our locality, heritage and link to the wider world and historical periods. Pupils develop a love of History and an interest in further study at home and the work of historians both past and present.
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