History

Intent    

A high quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge, chronology 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.

At Darnhall Primary School we provide our children with a range of life experiences and expand their understanding of the world they live in. This begins in EYFS where we develop pupils’ understanding of ‘past’ and ‘present’ through a range of stories and discussions around objects. Building on this, our curriculum takes the children on a chronological journey through the ages from year 1 to year 6. We teach right through the eras to the present day to develop a deep understanding of the rich history of the British Isles and some of the significant empires and time periods from around the world.

We teach our pupils to ‘think like a historian’ by examining artifacts and sources from the time and encouraging them to think critically about what we might be able to learn from the evidence. Each unit provides experiential learning which engages the children and helps to secure the knowledge whilst building on their understanding of key historical concepts across the school. Woven through our planning is a recognition of diversity - we teach the pupils that people from all backgrounds, ethnicities and religions have had an impact on the world and we hope that every child sees themselves in our curriculum. In addition to this, we ensure our topics lend themselves well to our promotion and learning of British Values, with talks of democracy throughout the ages and discussions about the rule of law, tolerance and the rights of people. Our curriculum is fully inclusive and supported by use of historical artefacts, secondary sources and visitors where appropriate.

Implementation

At Darnhall Primary School, History is taught through a topic driven approach with emphasis on the high-quality delivery of knowledge, enquiry and skills. We enable teachers’ autonomy to use the National Curriculum to select objectives and tailor teaching and learning to meet the needs and interests of all children in their class. We aim to implement the following to successfully meet our intent:

Each class has a long-term plan which drives our History teaching. Both Key Stages are driven by Termly topics

Retrieval and 'Flashback Fact'  tasks to monitor knowledge will be used. History will be linked to other areas of the curriculum (particularly Geography, Art and English) to develop children’s wider knowledge and encourage them to see connections between subjects.

Class Teachers will follow the long-term/medium-term planning to ensure high-quality teaching and the use of effective scaffolding to promote inclusive, positive pupil progress.

We will use assessment for learning to ensure all lessons are relevant and will help to plan for next steps.

Subject leaders are given regular time to ensure resources are kept up to date, to monitor the subject across the school, create action plans and to provide subject feedback to SLT.

Where appropriate, we use historical artefacts, visitors, workshops and trips 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 life was like in a particular period in history by having immersive, practical lessons, such as dressing up, re-enacting moments from the topic and whole school experiences.

Opportunities for classroom-based discussions around what children already know about a historical period or person and what else they want to find out, will begin each topic.

Using exciting hooks, engaging children from the outset; solving historical crimes, creating Eygptian collars and Stone age cave murals proved very popular

Children will be provided with the opportunity to complete History topic-based homework tasks to add challenge and increase understanding.

Each topic will have key vocabulary that will be displayed around the classroom to support the development of children’s historical knowledge

Impact

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

Early Years are assessed through questioning and open dialogues during both focussed and free play 

Assessing children's understanding of theme-linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.

Assessment of children's understanding through regular discussions about their learning.

Quizzes and  use of Knowledge Organisers  interviewing pupils about their learning (Pupil Voice)

Children complete a self-evaluation grid 

Staff meetings where children's books are scrutinized  and there is an opportunity for professional dialogue amongst the whole staff around progress and attainment.

Termly reporting of standards across the curriculum

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