History

Intent

At Badbury Park Primary School we strive to instil a sense of awe and wonder about the past, for children to be curious and ask questions about periods in History and for them to understand how the world has developed. They will also explore how culture and local community have developed over time, and how this influences the present.

We believe that children need to be, curious, ambitious, and adventurous in their learning, and in life. Alongside these values we promote a lifelong love of learning through using the outdoors as a stimulus and through our Forest School. Using the outdoors and nature helps bring history to life which stimulates curiosity about the past and what we can learn from it.

From EYFS up to the end of KS2, the children will be taught about various historical events, where they take place within a historical timeline and famous historical figures, some of which have shaped the world today. We will, where possible, link history to other subject areas.

We aim to make all children aware of the actions of important people in the past and enable children to know about significant events in British history. History will also ensure our children understand how Britain developed as a society, contributing to their understanding of their country of residence.

Implementation

Our whole curriculum is shaped by our school vision. We believe that through inspirational teaching, determination, love and laughter, the children in our school can achieve their greatest potential, regardless of their starting points in life. We aspire to do this through a creative, knowledge and skills led curriculum, with outdoor learning and play at its core, promoting confidence, collaboration, and engaging curiosity.

Our curriculum gives children an awareness of the past and a sense of chronology. Children will study British, local and world history. They ask and answer questions, learn key vocabulary and use a range of resources and artefacts as they find out about the past. Visits and school trips are used to enhance children’s learning and to ‘bring history to life’. We recognise that the personal development of children, spiritually, morally, socially and culturally and History allows children to explore and develop in these areas.

Long term and medium-term plans carefully set out the history to be covered in each tear group. Appropriate units of work have been assigned to each year group in Y1-6 and year groups will have a differentiated timeline so, as they move through the school, a sense of chronology will build up in the children’s minds.

The history curriculum is designed to develop an appreciation of the past and to understand the process of change over time. It incorporates the knowledge, skills and understanding as set out in the National Curriculum history programmes of study.

In addition to this, each class will have a timeline that follows them through the school. This will record all the previous learning and will help them to place new learning in the context of prior learning.

This will be our whole school teaching sequence for history lessons:

Starting the topic with the ‘big picture’, placing the history topic in the chronological context of previous learning, using the class timeline.
Brief review of learning covered in previous lesson/s.
Specify key vocabulary to be used and its meaning.
Conduct a historical enquiry using a variety of sources and / or artefacts.
Interpret findings.
Communicate their historical knowledge and understanding appropriately.
At the end of each session the children will reflect on the learning objective and have an opportunity to ask questions about this time period.
Potential greater depth pupils will be encouraged to independently apply their skills and knowledge consistently and confidently, organising their ideas and making connections between different historical periods, and with other areas of learning.
Children with special educational needs will be supported by pre teaching before the lesson. This will give them the opportunity to gain an understanding of the subject related vocabulary. These children will be expected to work towards the same learning objective but the resources and way the information is presented may be adapted to suit the learning needs.
We use grids to ensure there is clear progression in skills, knowledge and vocabulary throughout school.
We use historical artefacts, visitors, workshops and visits to excite and intrigue our children to find out more about events and people from the past. We aim to give our children as much understanding as possible about what is was like to be around at a particular period in history by having practical and experiential lessons where possible.
History work will be monitored through learning walks, lesson visits, book scrutiny and pupil voice. We will keep track of skills coverage across the year groups as part of a working document.

EYFS

The Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum supports children’s understanding of History through the planning and teaching of ‘Understanding the World’. This aspect is about how children find out about past and present events in their own lives, their families and other people they know. Children are encouraged to develop a sense of change over time and are given opportunities to differentiate between past and present by observing routines throughout the day, growing plants, observing the passing of seasons and time and looking at photographs of their life and of others. Practitioners encourage investigative behaviour and raise questions such as, ‘What do you think?', ‘Tell me more about?', 'What will happen if..?', ‘What else could we try?', ‘What could it be used for?' and ‘How might it work?' Use of language relating to time is used in daily routines and conversations with children for example, ‘yesterday', ‘old', ‘past', ‘now' and ‘then

Impact

By the time that children leave Badbury Park Primary we want them to have:

A love of learning in history.
A secure knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from the historical periods covered.
The ability to think critically about history and communicate confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate, and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.
The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, forming and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgements.
A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics

Children will be expected to leave Badbury Park reaching at least age-related expectations for history.

To view our History Skill Progression, please click here.