History

History, the study of the past, is all around us; we are continually making history through our thoughts, words and actions. History is personal and global; it is everyday life and momentous occasions. History is about people.

Through our study of the past, we can understand how our own world works. We can understand how and why things happen to us, for example, had you ever wondered why the polar ice caps are melting? The answer partially lies in history. The Industrial Revolution caused the birth of industrial towns and factories, belching out smoke and pollution. It also caused the mechanism of society, adding to the pollution. Could this partially explain the pollution problems that we face today? History is not just about the past!”

Historical Association

History Curriculum Intent

At Far Forest Primary, we provide a high-quality history curriculum that has been carefully designed to equip our children with a secure, coherent knowledge about British, local and World history. Curriculum content is knowledge, vocabulary and experience rich, delivered in a sequenced and where possible a chronological order. This allows our children to develop their understanding of abstract historical concepts as they move through school. Our curriculum reflects our locality and endeavours to ensure children are knowledgeable about their locality’s history and changes it has seen. Our history curriculum promotes curiosity and a love for learning about the past. Through an enquiry-based approach, children are encouraged to ask and explore historically valid questions and report their findings by drawing on skills from across the curriculum. Alongside the development of substantive knowledge, children will develop their disciplinary skills as they learn the fundamental elements of what it is to be a historian. Children will study a range of cultures and historical perspectives enabling them to be respectful, tolerant and empathetic. Children will leave Far Forest being knowledgeable about key people, events and time periods from the past and will weave these together from informed, overarching historical narratives.

Implementation- How Will We Deliver the Curriculum?

Knowledge at the Heart of the Curriculum

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 disciplinary knowledge (historical skills). Each unit of work is planned carefully to ensure concepts are taught in optimal order to support children’s understanding. As well as developing a breadth of historical knowledge, we want our children to become skilful historians. Each unit has an emphasis on historical enquiry where children investigate historically framed questions whilst also developing historical enquiries of their own. In addition to substantive and disciplinary knowledge, children will develop their experiences through museum visits, trips, handling artefacts and engaging in carefully planned fieldwork.

Golden Threads

Our curriculum is refined yearly but it maintains a consistent knowledge base to ensure conceptual progression. Our mixed age classes mean that a 2 year cycle is adopted, Cycle A and  Cycle B. We are currently on Cycle B, the substantive knowledge and discuplinary skills will continue to feed into Cycle A next year.  We have identified a set of key historical or ‘golden threads’ that children will repeatedly revisit throughout their time at Far Forest Primary. Our golden threads are: Community and Culture, Exploration & Invention, Hierarchy & Power and Conflict and Disaster. Our disciplinary skills are: Chronology, cause and consequence, similarities and differences, evidence and interpretation. The substantive knowledge and disciplinary skills will be visited more than once each year. For example, in Year 3/4, children will encounter concepts of exploration, inventions, conflict, chronology, causes and consequences when studying the Romans. In Years 5/6, children will revisit the concepts of conflict, chronology, causes and consequences as they explore the events of World War 2. All of our overviews for each unit have a prior knowledge sections as well as vocabulary (Tier 2/3) vocabulary that the children have encountered previously to support retrieval and inform planning.

Planning

At Far Forest Primary, we strongly believe in children knowing more and remembering more. The key skills and knowledge for each topic covered across the school has been carefully tailored to meet the needs of our pupils. Furthermore, the vocabulary that the children are exposed to over the years is clearly outlined on plans so our pupils are encouraged to speak like e.g a historian, scientist etc.. This is modelled by all staff and training has provided teachers and TA's with the tools to create a vocabulary rich classroom that supports pupils. 

Our curriculum is enquiry based with a key question driving the learning. Our tailored plans support our intent and provide opportunities for children to become critical thinkers, explore ideas, make connections and ask their own questions. See sample medium term plans below which outline how we plan and also how prior learning is not only embedded but developed. All plans are linked to our school drivers of 'Resilience, Diversity and Possibilities'. 

Linking Curriculum and pedagogy

We have developed our curriculum to make learning stick. At the heart of our approach is retrieval practice and recapping. Units of work refer to previous learning e.g. ‘continuity and change’, ‘similarities and difference.’ For example, when studying the Anglo-Saxons, children make comparisons between Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon Britain e.g. inventions, leaders, role of women, farming etc. Our teaching of history is driven by an enquiry approach and seeks to capitalise on children’ curiosity and prior knowledge. The overarching enquiry is broken down into sub enquiries to give children a sense of incremental progression and make learning large chunks of learning more manageable.

Teaching History Through Narrative.

Where possible, history units of work will be taught alongside thematically linked texts during English lessons. For example, Year 3/4 will study the text ‘Egyptology’ when studying the unit Ancient Egypt, similarly Year 6 will study ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’ when studying the unit on WW2.

Reading Across the Curriculum

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. We use books not only to develop reading skills but also plan opportunities for children to read age-appropriate texts linked to our curriculum. We have invested heavily in supporting our history topics with Collins Big Cat titles that enrich the wider curriculum. Our English texts are aimed to be pitched above the reading age of pupils to provide challenge and also to expose children to a wide range of vocabulary to support their knowledge and understanding.

Impact 

  Assessment

We will assess pupils knowledge and understanding in the following ways...

• Termly POP tasks to assess knowledge and skills taught 
• Quizzes
• Making links across the curriculum
• Memory games
• Sharing and imparting their knowledge to others through presentations/assemblies.