‘To use a variety of historical contexts (local, national and international) to foster the curiosity of the historical world and develop an understanding of the impact of the past on our lives today.’
History Intent Statement:
Our History curriculum at Myddle CE Primary School, offers a coherently planned sequence of lessons to help teachers ensure they have progressively covered the skills and concepts required in the National Curriculum. At Myddle, we aim to develop historical skills and concepts which are transferable to whatever period of history is being studied and will equip children for future learning.
These key historical skills and concepts, which are revisited throughout different units, are:
- Historical Interpretations
- Historical Investigations
- Chronological Understanding
- Knowledge and Understanding of Events
- People and Changes in the Past
- Presenting, Organising and Communicating
The coverage of recent history in KS1 enables children to acquire an understanding of time, events and people in their memory and their parents’ and grandparents’ memories. For KS1, we have designed a curriculum that can be covered chronologically in reverse to allow a full opportunity for children to really grasp the difficult concept of the passing of time.
The intent in lower KS2 is that children can work in chronological order from ancient history such as ‘Ancient Egypt’ and then progress onto more modern history such as ‘The Railways’. During upper KS2, children repeat and embed this sequence of chronology with a wider selection of ancient history such as ‘Early Islamic Civilisations’ and ‘Stone Age’ through to more modern history such as ‘World War II’. The repetition of chronological order from ancient to modern in lower and upper KS2 allows for children to truly develop and embed a sense of time and how civilisations were interconnected. Children start to understand how some historical events occurred concurrently in different locations, e.g. Ancient Egypt and the Stone Age.
At Myddle, we aim to:
- Develop knowledge and skills, engaging pupils with enquiry and investigation whilst encouraging them to challenge ideas, question and lead their own learning.
- Develop chronological thinking through the sequencing of our curriculum
- Sequence both British history and world history to provide opportunities to build on skills, compare and contrast.
- Challenge pupils’ understanding of an era through analysis and interpretation of information.
- Visit sites of local historical importance, such as Shrewsbury and Chester as well as local museums such as Blists Hill. We also study the impacts of an era on our local community and the wider world.
Implementation:
Our History curriculum aims to excite the children and allow them to develop their own skills as historians. We encourage regular references to timelines and how topics fit together as well as a hands-on approach involving artefacts and outreach programmes where appropriate so as to bring history alive to our young learners. As part of a topic lead programme, it allows opportunities for cross curricular links to be made to ensure the children have many occasions where by they can apply their knowledge and understanding.
The teaching of history throughout the school will include the following:
Begin with a ‘Knowledge Harvest‘. This is where we find out what children already know about a topic so that planning can be carefully adapted where needed and forms the bases of assessment for learning throughout the teaching process. During the knowledge harvest, we also give the opportunity for children to raise questions that they would to find out during their learning allowing them express their voice and opinions. We also assess understanding of specific vocabulary. Again, this is assessed at the start of a unit of work and revisited at the end of unit to visibly see what understanding the children have gained.
Use artefacts as a WOW experience, where accessible, within the teaching of the topic. This will encourage the children to become history detectives by getting them to think about what the artefact is for, where it is from and how old it is. Artefacts help pupils question and understand the past.
Outreach intervention and visits: inviting people into school to talk about; demonstrate or re-enact aspects or periods in history has the effect of bringing history alive to the children and provides them with a more visual view of the topic they are covering. Organising a visit to link in with the topic will further enhance the learning and this is encouraged for each class each term.
Use of ICT to support learning and make the curriculum accessible for everyone.
We aim for equality, making sure as many women as men are studied.
End the topic with a ‘Double Page Spread‘ so that the children can showcase their learning and capture the knowledge they have gained.
Impact – Assessment:
The impact of our teaching in History can be seen across the school with an increase in the profile of history. The learning environments reflect historical themes and technical/subject specific vocabulary is displayed, spoken and used by all learners. Impact of learning is measured through key questioning skills built into lessons, child-led assessment such as success criteria grids, jigsaw targets and knowledge harvest and key vocabulary grids which are used at the start and at the end of each unit. These are used to assess prior knowledge as well as the knowledge that has been learnt during the unit.
History Progression Document
Documents:
Humanities – Core Long Term Plan
History National Curriculum
Myddle History National Curriculum Coverage
Humanities Policy – May 21