History
This is an extract from the History curriculum policy with information for parents (full policy available on request):
History Curriculum Intent:
We aim to build a well-balanced history curriculum that will stimulate children’s curiosity about the past, encourage the acquisition of knowledge and inspire thought. Through finding out about how and why the world has developed over time, children will better understand how the past influences the present. What they learn through history can influence their decisions about personal choices, attitudes and values. Honest discussion about the past will help children to think critically about history and communicate more confidently their thoughts and questions. We want the children to reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, forming and refining questions and lines of enquiry. We will encourage children to expand their knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from the past and to develop a chronologically secure understanding of local, British and world history.
Children will make comparisons across time periods and develop an appropriate historical vocabulary, which will include abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’. We will develop historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance and will foster a respect for historical evidence and the ability to make use of it to support their explanations and judgements. We aim to cultivate a sense of curiosity and wonder about the past. We intend for children to gain cumulative knowledge over time to prepare them, as historians, for KS3 and beyond.
History Pedagogy and Implementation:
Teaching and Organisation
At Seely, History is taught as part of ‘Topic-based Learning’ across all phases. Our topic-based learning curriculum focuses on clear links across foundation and core subjects, aiming for breadth across the whole curriculum. Sequences of learning build skills, knowledge and understanding over time from a knowledge base and teachers ensure children can articulate prior learning and current learning and that they can think about future learning. Practical hook sessions and experience days excite children into learning and help them remember key facts and vocabulary.
History lessons support lines of enquiry for an essential question each term. Teachers plan sequences of lessons across their unit that will build on and develop the children’s knowledge and skills. Children have access to key language, definitions and a range of primary and secondary resources, which promotes connections to be made across all core and foundation subjects where applicable.
Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
Most history learning comes under Understanding the World in the EYFS. We guide children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment. Children begin to get a sense of the concept of past and present through listening to and discussing stories; talking about events that occur in their life at home, at school and within the community; and looking at both common and more unusual artefacts from a range of places and areas.
Focused activities are planned to incorporate these opportunities. Provision, where children have the opportunity to engage in self-initiated activities in order to develop their history skills, curiosity and a widening vocabulary, is planned weekly.
Key Stage One (KS1)
Pupils are taught about the past, using common words and phrases relating to the passing of time. They learn where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences between the many ways of life they experience and that they learn about. They will be taught a wide vocabulary of everyday historical terms. Children will ask and answer questions, choosing and using parts of stories and other sources to show that they know and understand key features of events. They will study some of the ways in which we find out about the past and identify different ways in which it is represented.
Key Stage Two (KS2)
Pupils continue to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, establishing clear narratives within and across the periods, which they study. They note connections, contrasts and trends over time and develop the appropriate use of historical terms. They regularly address and sometimes devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance. Children will construct informed responses that involve thoughtful selection and organisation of relevant historical information. They will understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.
Access for all
We make sure that all children access the History curriculum and achieve success, therefore ensuring that adapted tasks where pertinent allow them to develop and extend their depth of knowledge and understanding so that they can demonstrate successfully what they know, understand and can do.
Wider Curriculum
Each year there is a local history study in the summer term, so that children are accumulating local history knowledge.
The Seely Mastermind Quiz takes place twice a year to quiz children on general knowledge facts, with a vast number of History questions.
