History
From the moment our smallest children come through the doors in reception, they are immersed in experiences that:
- Helps to gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world
- Inspires children’s curiosity to know more about the past
- Equips children to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement
- Assist children in understanding the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time
Our curriculum is guided by the following academic fingerprint:
Children will:
- Have secure knowledge and understanding of the past, on a local, national and global scale.
- Have a coherent chronological understanding, be able to analyse sources and weigh evidence, and confidently enquire and ask perceptive questions about the past.
- Become confident in their understanding of key historical concepts (disciplinary knowledge), including continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference, sources and evidence, interpretation, and significance.
- Use their knowledge and understanding to make connections, create historically valid questions, and create structured accounts, including, but not limited to, written responses.
- Grow in their curiosity and enthusiasm about the past and use this to understand the diversity of different cultures and societies, as well as their own identities.
How history is taught:
- Teaching of History at Knayton is based on the aims and purposes outlined in the National Curriculum and has fidelity to the academic discipline of historical learning.
- In EYFS, History is taught through a play-based curriculum that encourages children to develop the key concept of place.
- History in Y1-6 is taught each term, as a discrete lesson (Autumn 2, Spring 2 and Summer 2).
- In order to help children to know more and remember more, children will revisit prior learning every lesson, through a low-stakes mini quiz. This is to firstly ensure that previously learned material is not forgotten and secondly to ensure that, through frequent revisiting of a range of material, children are able to form ever more well-connected networks of ideas.
- High quality core texts are used to enhance teaching. Recommended reads have been carefully considered for each year group and use the highest quality texts.
Our history Curriculum
- Learning starts in EYFS, where children acquire a wide range of vocabulary and develop a sense of past and present.
- Our history curriculum has our 3 values of compassion, courage and respect woven throughout.
- We have carefully designed a knowledge-rich curriculum, underpinned by a progression of skills.
- Wherever possible, knowledge has been organised chronologically, to allow children to develop a clear chronological understanding of the past.
- The knowledge and skills build incrementally so that by the end of Key Stage 2 children can know, understand and apply the subject content taught, and be fully prepared for their secondary school History learning.
- We use children’s previous learning and build on this. This allows them to build strong schemas that they can then apply to wider contexts.
- National Curriculum expectations were used as the basis and these were further built on by identifying additional knowledge (substantive knowledge), skills (disciplinary knowledge) and vocabulary.
Please click here to view our history curriculum
Here is what our children say:
"We get to learn about what life was like during the past. I remember learning about Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War".
"I like it because we get to see and handle artefacts and see them in real life!"
"We go on trips to museums and it is really interesting."
