History at Longlands Primary School

Intent

Through our History curriculum we aim to ignite children’s curiosity about the past in Britain and the wider world. Children will understand how the past influences the present; they will develop a growing sense of identity and necessary knowledge and skills for the future to empower them to take their role as informed and active citizens in the 21st century. The curriculum will progressively build knowledge of significant events and people, within a chronological framework. The children will engage with challenging themes which will enable them to connect with what is happening in the world around them, engage in debate about what is happening today and use the past to inform those opinions. Throughout the curriculum, pupils will develop an understanding of how we know about the past through a range of sources of evidence and with increasing confidence will consider their utility and reliability.

Please click her to see our History Curriculum Overview.

Implementation

A progressive, well-sequenced and engaging History curriculum, which is led by enquiry, in order to develop both children’s skills and knowledge. We teach the National Curriculum, enriched by experiences to maximise learning for all children.

Pupils will study 3 History topics each year, on a carefully designed, progressive 2 year rolling program. Teachers are given the flexibility to teach lessons weekly, or as a ‘blocked’ approach, dependent on the needs of the class.

So that every child is given the best possible opportunity of achieving the highest standards in History, the way in which we teach this subject includes:

• Using high quality resources and enquiry-based learning sequences from the Historical Association and the Rising Stars progressive history curriculum
• Building on prior knowledge as well as revisiting previously taught skills through a progressive curricular approach
• Providing enrichment experiences: visits and trips, to give the children real-life contexts for learning

Click her to see the History Skill Progression Overview for KS1, LKS2 & UKS2.

Impact

Questioning will be used to assess understanding and extend thinking; in this way, misconceptions and gaps in learning can be quickly and directly addressed; verbal and written feedback will address key areas for progress, which will be acted upon throughout the lesson and through a sequence of lessons. Ideas and concepts will be revisited in different, more challenging, contexts in later units, using varied assessments and the inclusion of quizzes are all designed to help pupils remember content and integrate new knowledge into their evolving conceptual framework.

Children who are finding learning more difficult, who have gaps in knowledge and skills, or who are making limited progress will be quickly identified and targeted to be provided with small group support within lessons, additional same day intervention (which may include 1:1 feedback and additional supported tasks, such as pre-teaching of vocabulary) or differentiated tasks within the whole-class lesson.