St Aidan's CE Primary SchoolHistory
History Subject Leader: Mrs H Bull
Our History Curriculum Intent
Intent:
At St. Aidan’s Primary School we shape our history curriculum to ensure it is fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum and EYFS Framework for History; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum that encompasses the British Values throughout; ensuring the progressive development of historical concepts, knowledge and skills; and for the children to study life in the past. We aim for an exciting and engaging history curriculum which should inspire pupils to be curious and fascinated about Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Our teaching equips pupils with knowledge about the history of Britain and how it has influenced and been influenced by the wider world; know and understand about significant aspects of the history of the wider world like ancient civilisations and empires; changes in living memory and beyond living memory; learn about the lives of significant people of the past; understand the methods of historical enquiry and be able to ask and answer questions.
The aim of teaching history in our school is to provide an aspirational learning environment whilst ensuring children enjoy and love learning about history by gaining this knowledge and skills, not just through experiences in the classroom, but also with the use of fieldwork and educational visits.
Implementation
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in history, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. History is taught as part of a half-termly topic, sometimes termly, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum and EYFS Framework.
The history curriculum at St. Aidan’s is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England and EYFS Framework, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills and taught in each Key Stage. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills document. Teachers can use this document to plan their history lessons suitable to their class’s interests and what they want to learn. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group.
At St. Aidan’s, we ensure that history has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences. Teachers will also provide opportunities and experiences for the children and ensure that pupils are motivated and nurtured to reach their full potential.
Impact
Within history, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry-based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school.
Our history curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work.
The impact and measure of this is to ensure that children at St. Aidan’s are equipped with historical skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at Key Stage 3 and for life as an adult in the wider world.
We want the children to have thoroughly enjoyed learning about history, therefore encouraging them to undertake new life experiences now and in the future.