History

History
at St Anne’s Primary School

Intent: Why does our History curriculum look like this?

At St Anne’s Catholic Primary, we have designed a History curriculum which provides a high-quality, sequenced and progressive teaching and learning experience for children.  We want to inspire our children to be inquisitive about the past and to think and act as historians.  Children will understand how things have evolved to the present day and the impact the past has had on our lives today.  By linking their learning to a range of historical themes, our children will have opportunities to investigate and interpret the past, understand and develop a chronology of events, build an overview of Britain’s past as well as exploring key periods of history across the wider world.

The curriculum is designed to ensure children begin by exploring history linked to themselves, their locality and events in living memory in EYFS and KS1. It progresses to explore key historical events and people linked to British history and provides opportunities to compare this with significant world historical periods. Our lessons include familiar themes to allow children to compare and contrast periods in history such as activities in daily life, society and politics, entertainment and leisure and important achievements, inventions and change.

Implementation: How will we achieve this?

Our children follow a carefully structured and planned History curriculum which has been designed to ensure children know more, are able to remember more and can do more as they progress through our school. Our curriculum includes the following strands of learning:

·         Historical Knowledge

·         Historical Enquiry

·         Chronological Understanding

Our Teaching Approach

History is taught in blocks of lessons to ensure children have opportunities for a sustained period of study and have time to embed and enhance their learning.  As a school, we use the ‘PlanBee’ curriculum plans for History, which are carefully adapted and enhanced. Detailed medium-term planning supports teaching, ensures continuity and carefully plans for progression and depth.  The medium-term planning also underpins an appropriate teaching pedagogy for effective quality first teaching in History.  We endeavour for our teaching and learning in History to be practical and hands on; where we encourage children to question and investigate for themselves and to provide them with high quality resources and materials to support their learning. Our children are taught to understand the core skills needed to work as a Historian.

Impact: How will we know our children are achieving?

By the end of each key stage, children are expected to know, apply and understand the skills and techniques specified in the History National Curriculum.

Children are assessed using our Balance tracking system where professional judgements are made in relation to their learning for each topic.  This ensures progress is maintained and end of key stage expectations are met by all children. Children are assessed termly and a final summative assessment made at the end of the academic year.  Children will be assessed as either working below, working towards, working at or working at greater depth in accordance with Age Related Expectations.

In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

·         Balance scores are given at the end of every lesson to reflect each individual child’s understanding and learning.

·         A focus on ‘Sticky Knowledge’ at the beginning of every History lesson- where children are asked to reflect on previous learning and to recall knowledge retained.

·         A celebration of learning in History which demonstrates progression across the school (History Scrapbook);

·         Pupil discussions about their learning (Pupil Voice)

At St Anne’s, we aim to provide our children with the opportunity to be and feel like ‘historians’ and to ultimately inspire a love, enthusiasm and curiosity for the subject.