History

History Curriculum Intent

VISION

Our curriculum at Lockerley Primary School encompasses the following aims to meet the needs of our children and the History curriculum is a vehicle to bring these aims to life:

Aims of our curriculum:

ACTIVE - Provide richness and depth to inspirational learning in school

Concrete resources such as Hampshire History Boxes, as well as immersive experience days, are used to embed conceptual understanding in the History curriculum to allow pupils to make links between each area of learning.

EXPERIENCES - Provide a breadth of opportunity out of school whilst rooting children in their immediate and local environment

School visits are planned to provide children with experiences that develop their understanding of historical context within our local environment, and provide broad opportunities that compliment and build on those from within the school setting.

DIVERSITY - Build cultural awareness & knowledge to encourage children to be outward looking and forward thinking

Teaching across both key stages provides opportunities for children to build on their cultural awareness through consideration of different societies through History, and developing a breadth and depth to their understanding by making links between historical and modern civilisations.

PURPOSE - We believe learning should matter

Making meaningful learning is central to our teaching. Learning journeys are made clear to the children with an outcome we are working towards and the steps along the way. We have developed ‘real life’ opportunities for children to share their work.

History Curriculum Implementation

EYFS

EYFS planning is matched to age and stage appropriate curriculum. Historical skills are adapted to match key areas of the curriculum, with children building on their knowledge of toys and everyday objects, as well as key vocabulary such as yesterday and tomorrow to demonstrate understanding. The provision includes individual and small group work, and a balance between guided interaction with direct teaching and child-led activities. Objective led planning allows the teachers to tailor individual next steps, based on assessments, into the environment and play-based activities for the children. Small group work is used to target particular needs, and early intervention is also used 1:1 with a child if they have been identified as not keeping up.

Y1-6

History is taught in the Autumn Term, and as the key foundation subject it is allocated two afternoons per week for in-depth study. Teachers plan from the National Curriculum objectives alongside the Hampshire Historical Skills. Each year group has a long term plan which outlines the learning journeys to be covered referring to the units in the National Curriculum. This is a progressive cyclical learning approach where learning is revisited over the course of each Key Stage, deepening their understanding each time.

Each learning journey is central to the teaching and this is made clear to the children. This is shared through the ‘big question’ which features on the History learning wall in each classroom. This will incorporate all the skills they will be learning within the unit, therefore children are able to understand how one lesson builds on another within the journey.

By presenting our learning in this way, and allowing children the opportunity to deepen their understanding by focusing on History for an entire term, children have opportunities to investigate and interpret the past, understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s past as well as that of the wider world, and build their ability to communicate historically.

We develop children with the following essential characteristics to help them become historians:

An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past;
The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences;
The ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources;
The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry;
A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning;
A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics;
A developing sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.

Within a History lesson the teacher will often use split inputs and peel away groups. Planning is flexible to the learners needs and can run over a course of a few days. There will be a key task which has variations of this task to support and scaffold and to deepen learning. Children are encouraged to self-select the tasks depending on their confidence level.

Historical language is scaffolded in each class with key vocabulary displayed on the working wall. Teachers model the use of this language in their teaching. Stem sentences are used to support the use this key vocabulary.

We also strongly believe that within our curriculum skills should be developed alongside knowledge. Therefore we have a set of core skills at the centre of our curriculum which underpin everything we do. These build progressively as the children move through the school.

To seek out and enjoy challenges
To ask questions to extend thinking
To collaborate with others
To overcome barriers by trying out alternative and adapting or developing ideas
To assess themselves and others
To show commitment and perseverance
To connect ideas and experiences in different ways
To generate ideas and explore possibilities.

History Curriculum Impact

Assessments are made by the teachers continuously and used to plan subsequent lessons. Tapestry is used within EYFS to record observations and assessments. This shares learning with parents and we encourage parents to share learning from home through this platform. Live marking within lessons drives immediate feedback and adaptations to learning. If feedback is given after the lesson, children are expected to respond to the marking during the following session. Teachers track individual progress on assessment sheets which identify children not achieving Age Related Expectations and those exceeding them. This provides information for the pitch of teaching in the next History term.