History

As Historians...

Children will develop the skills to:

• Understand the history of Britain as a chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
• Know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world:
• Understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analysis
• Understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed.
• Gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.

Intent

The intent of our teaching of history at Oake, Bradford and Nynehead CofE (VC) Primary School, is to stimulate children’s interest in history. This should equip them to think critically about their understanding of life in the past; how this impacted daily life at the time and how this impacts the world today.

This is important because the children are growing up in a modern multicultural society and by considering how people lived in the past, they can form a sense of identity and value of their own and others’ cultures and achievements; thus developing their own life choices. To support the children to understand this, where possible, the children should explore the local area within the wider history topics of Key Stage 2.

Therefore, at our school, we teach and support children to build substantive knowledge around:

• Understanding how events in the past have influenced our lives today
• Developing a chronological framework for significant events, eras and people
• Building an increased understanding of their own position in their community and the world

This has led to the creation of our long term plan of history (above) which aims to develop this substantive knowledge. To ensure children in the EYFS, are being immersed in history teaching, there are 3 reception-age taught yearly. 

As the children’s disciplinary knowledge develops as they get older, how they view and complete a topic will also progress. To ensure this progress happens, a detailed long term plan (on the following pages) has been made to support teachers in ensuring the children meet this progression.

Implementation

Teachers have had training by the history leader as to how to plan and implement a unit of work and these can then be adapted and reused. Staff have access to planning support documents which have information regarding the national curriculum objective, substantive concepts, disciplinary knowledge and sources available to them for each topic.

Each unit includes an overarching question that children build their understanding to answer at the end of the unit. For example, in Kestrel Class in Year A, Spring, the children have an overarching question of 'What is the history of Oake School?' and they will build up their understanding of the school's history in lessons, concluding with the children bringing their substantive knowledge together to form a piece on the history of our school.

Within lessons throughout the school, children learn the substantive knowledge to answer their topic's question through observation, handling, reading and/or discussion of sources. These sources have been purposefully chosen to build understanding of the substantive knowledge identified as being important for the unit.

Children with SEND will develop their understanding of history through engaging with full access to our history curriculum and by adapting teaching, materials and activities to support them.

Throughout the school, the children will develop their understanding of the following substantive concepts:

• Power: Having control or authority over others.
• Travel: How people have moved over time for short-term or long-term reasons – including invasion.
• Revolution: A sudden and quick change.
• Society: A group of people sharing common cultural aspects such as language, behaviour, dress etc.
• Civilisation: An advanced social structure that has a writing system, surplus food, range of trades, a government and urbanisation.
• Trade: How goods are created, sold, transported and bought.

From all of this, children will learn key facts (substantive knowledge) per lesson which are turned into questions for them to include in their end-of-week quiz. The substantive knowledge will also be assessed through an end of unit quiz which teachers can use for assessment. The disciplinary knowledge is assessed through the progression document above.

Impact

The impact of history is assessed in a variety of ways. Book looks, discussions with staff and comparison to planning is used by the subject leader to gain an insight of History teaching in practise. In addition to this, the subject leader conducts informal pupil interviews alongside the child’s learning journey to ensure that learning has been achieved sufficiently and can be recalled when prompted. Through this, it is evident that pupils are excited and curious about history.

This also provides opportunities to identify areas that the subject could progress with and bring the subject forward.

If you wish to find out more about our history curriculum, please click the link below.