Purpose of study

A high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand 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.

Intent

By the end of EYFS, pupils will be able to:

• talk about the lives of the people around them and their roles in society

• know some similarities and differences between things in the past and now, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class

• understand the past through settings, characters and events encountered in books read in class and storytelling

By the end of Key Stage 1, pupils will be able to:

• develop an awareness of the past and know where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework

• make comparisons by identifying similarities and differences between life in different historical periods

• show an understanding of how we know about the past

• describe changes in living memory using historical vocabulary

• Recall some significant people from history and events beyond living memory

By the end of Key Stage 2, pupils will be able to:

• develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, noting connections, contrasts and trends over time

• use the appropriate historical vocabulary to describe change, cause, similarity and difference when discussing significant historical periods, events or people

• understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources

• select, organise and use relevant historical information to communicate their understanding of history in a variety of ways

Characteristics of an Historian

• An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes.

• The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very 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, formulating 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 judgments.

• A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.

Implementation- How Will We Deliver the Curriculum?

Knowledge at the Heart of the Curriculum

At St Anne’s, teaching staff are passionate about history and plan lessons to enthuse and enthral all children through knowledge-rich lessons. Learning knowledge is not an endpoint in itself, it is a springboard to learning more knowledge. Each unit in our overview is underpinned by rich, substantive knowledge and ambitious vocabulary, whilst also ensuring children are developing their chronological and disciplinary knowledge. Each unit of work is planned carefully to ensure concepts are taught in optimal order to support children's understanding. Our history curriculum utilises the power of narrative from the Early Years onwards to develop vocabulary and as a means to support understanding of historical concepts, both through planned fictional stories and storytelling in (and between) lessons. Children have access to historical texts in class and as part of their home-reading selection. In addition to substantive and disciplinary knowledge, children will develop their experiential knowledge through visits (live and/or virtual), handling artefacts (and/or quality representations of artefacts) and engaging in fieldwork in the locality. 

Historical Concepts

Key historical concepts sit at the core of our curriculum to support our children to secure these abstract concepts through repeated encounters in their specific contexts. 

Key concepts: (Historical areas of understanding) A range of these concepts are explored through each historical unit and provide lenses through which to consider different aspects of history.

• Community and culture (architecture, art, civilisation, communication, economy, inspiration, myth, nation, religion, settlement, story, trade)

• Conflict and disaster (conquest, liberation, occupation, military, peace, plague, surrender, treaty, war)

• Exploration and invention (discovery, migration, navigation, progress, tools)

• Hierarchy and power (country, democracy, empire, equality, government, law, monarchy, oppression, parliament, politics, poverty, slavery) Disciplinary Concepts (Historical lines of enquiry) These are historical ideas and skills that are taught and applied through each unit of history. These skills build progressively as pupils move through the school.

• Chronology

• Similarity and difference

• Cause and consequence

• Continuity and change

• Significance

•Historical enquiry (source material, artefacts, fact and opinion)

• Written and oral expression: (Using historical terminology, presenting findings in variety of ways, making comparisons and links, explanations, awareness of audience, using evidence to support statements)

Valuing Our Local Heritage

We believe strongly that children should have a rich understanding of their local heritage. This is why local history is woven into our history curriculum to ensure it is explicitly taught and that links with larger historical themes are made. For example, in Year 2 the children enjoy learning about their town of Chemley Wood, first recorded sometime around the year 1200 as '"the wood called Chelemundesheia". The name derives from 'Ceolmund's haeg', with the second word meaning 'enclosure'. It refers to a Saxon settlement surrounded by pasture for sheep or cattle, enclosed by hawthorn hedges and owned by a man called Ceolmund. Year Two also learn about a local hero, William Shakespeare, and consider his legacy. In Year 5 the children enjoy a local study linked to Warwick Castle and make links to Medieval Monarchs and the influence of Kings/Queens on Warwick. Year 6 consider the impact of the Industrial Revolution for Birmingham. 

Linking Curriculum and Pedagogy

We have developed our pedagogy and curriculum to make learning stick. At the heart of our approach is retrieval practice and recapping. Retrieval practice involves deliberately recalling knowledge from memory to make learning more robust and flexible.  Each time a memory is retrieved, it is strengthened and less likely to be forgotten. If we wish our curriculum to build over time, then we need to teach in a way that makes knowledge ‘stick’. Units of work refer to learning from previous units to enable children to grapple with historical concepts such as 'continuity and change', and 'similarity and difference'. 

Teaching History Through Narrative

Humans are a storytelling species. Stories are ‘psychologically privileged’ in the way our memory treats them. Put simply, if we encounter new knowledge within a narrative, we are more likely to retain that knowledge. When possible history units of work will be taught alongside thematically linked texts during opprotunities such as: English lessons, whole-class reading, class story, RfP, home reading,  For example, when studying the Romans Year 4 children share 'The Roman Diary' by Richard Platt as a clas read.  Similarly, Year 3 share the text ‘Egyptology' whilst learning about Ancient Egypt. Year 6 read Freedom by Catherine Johnson during their study unit on Civil Rights . Narratives are also used within history lessons to bring time periods to life through story telling. All KS2 classes have a copy of  'Our Island Story’ to support an understanding, through narrative, of chronology from the Romans up until Queen Victoria.

Reading Across the Curriculum

In order to develop children's reading skills, our teaching staff plan opportunities for children to independently read age-appropriate texts that link to the history topic being studied, or topics that have been previously studied. Additionally, the home reading provision includes arange  of non-fiction topic related texts. Whole class reading lessons are also intentionally sequenced to develop children's background knowledge and widen their subject-specific vocabulary. 

Aspirations For The Future

Pupils develop an understanding of how subjects and specific skills are linked to future jobs. 

Here are some of the jobs you could aspire to do in the future as a Historian:

• Member of Parliament
• Curator
• Researcher
• University lecturer/school teacher
• Publicity Assistant
• Tour Guide
• Law/Police
• Archivist

Assessment

Through the explicit and progressive teaching of History knowledge and skills, both the teachers and the pupils assess their learning continuously throughout the lesson.

Approaches to day-today assessments include:

Prior learning checks, retrieval, mini-quizzes, prediction and anticipation activities, stop and jot, high-level questioning etc.

At the end of the unit, pupils complete and end of unit assessment activity.

Our assessment systems enable teachers to make informed judgements about the depth of their learning and the progress they have made over time.

Enrichment 

At St. Anne's children are provided with a range of opportunities outside of the classroom to enhance their knowledge and to be a historian.

Partnership with families

Please see below the amazing range of history projects created by children and families at home.

Impact - How Do We Know Our Curriculum is Effective?

Pupil Voice

KS1

Do you enjoy History?

Isabella - "It was fun learning about The Great Fire of London because we had magnifying glasses and we were detectives. We looked at some wood that was all black and a really burnt bun!"

Phoenix - "I like it because it teaches us about the past, we learnt about Emily Davison and Rosa Parks. They changed our lives and were very brave. We acted out what happened"

Lewis - "Do you remember when we learned about Chelmund and he only had one eye?  My mum took me to see where the stones are. I liked it when the lady game in and we made models out of plasticine.'

How does history links to other subjects at St. Anne's?

Phoenix– "History links to our maths as we look at chronology and timelines".

Harvey- "We read lots of books about our history topics".

Why do we learn history?

Joel - "It tells us about how people lived in the past".

Noah – "We learn about what people did and how they lived. Schools were very different!"

KS2

Do you enjoy History?

Freda – “I find it fascinating to discover what peoples lives were like before our own and what achievements mankind have had to get to where we are now. I spend lots of time buying books about history outside of school. I read lots of interesting things on the French Revolution, Greek Mythology and the Stewarts. I love history!"

Obi - "I enjoy learning about the past, I enjoy the activities, I like knowing about the past and how things came to be".

Leandra – "It opens my mind about the past and makes us learn from our mistakes".

Nathan – "It has to be remembered and I like considering the roles of leaders".

What might a knowledge of history help you to do in the future?

Ethan – “You could go on to study it at A-Level and all the knowledge from primary education will help you with the new knowledge you acquire along the way.”

Lacie – “You could grow up to be an archaeologist like the ones we have learned about. We could be the next person to make a famous discovery!”

Why do we learn history?

Ikenna - "We learn history to change the future, to be better and to know what happened".

Leandra – "It makes us learn from our mistakes".

How does history links to other subjects at St. Anne's?

Lenny – "History links to art because we look at cave paintings and we learnt about hunter gatherers in geography".

Kyla - "Our History links to reading because we read about the stone age. We looked at the vikings in Music too".

High Quality Outcomes

The impact of our history curriculum can be seen in work in children’s curriculum books. Children have knowledge organisers, which outline key knowledge and vocabulary the children will be learning and teachers and children assess against these. The teacher uses mini assessments, inits to ensure learning is being retained. At the end of the unit, children complete a longer review of learning. Depending on the age of the class, this might be a knowledge test, an extended piece of writing or a double page spread which captures what they have learnt and remembered. Learning is revisited regularly.