History

 Growing historians to Live in God’s World

Intent

At St Andrew’s C of E Primary School, our vision for our history teaching is to grow historians in God’s world. We have shaped our history curriculum to ensure that it inspires the children’s curiosity and fascination to learn about the past of: Britain, their local environment alongside the wider world and to act and think as historians. It is our intent that our history teaching equips children to ask perceptive questions, have opportunities to investigate and interpret the past, gain chronological knowledge, think critically and develop historical knowledge through experiences in the classroom alongside educational visits. Historical topics are informed by the National Curriculum, are sensitive to children’s interests and include the historical context of the local area. All children, regardless of their backgrounds, cultures and abilities are encouraged to develop a deeper understanding of the rich history of their locality and wider world. Every opportunity is taken to link history to the wider curriculum as we believe this creates lifelong learners who develop a passion for history.

 

GROWING: Our focus is on ambitious and continuous development within a nurturing and supportive environment, recognising that different pupils will need different levels of support in order to achieve success. With hope at the root, it encompasses belief, aspiration, courage, perseverance, transformation and celebration. 
Aspiration: Class teachers consistently model high expectations to pupils which means they understand what is expected of them. The History Leader also undertakes monitoring to uphold high standards in history, which includes discussing and moderating pupils’ work internally. 

Perseverance: At St Andrew’s C of E Primary School, the history teaching is differentiated to ensure that all children make progress and are appropriately challenged to develop deep historical knowledge and skills.  

Transformation: All teachers follow a history skills progression document, the National Curriculum alongside curriculum maps to underpin their history teaching. Alongside this, where historical skills and content are revisited, formative assessment is used to ensure that prior understanding is built upon and embedded and to help plan for next steps within the children’s learning journey. Pupils also undertake start and end of unit assessments in history as this helps to identify their previous knowledge and any gaps or misconceptions. 

Celebration: Our Learning Adventure books demonstrate that pupils take pride in their history outcomes, and feedback from parents and carers has demonstrated that they are pleased with the breadth of our wider curriculum. Pupils are also encouraged to independently undertake their own research about the topics covered within history and many children are keen to do this as additional learning tasks outside of school, which demonstrates they have a love of History. 

 HISTORIANS: We want our learners to be equipped with the knowledge and skills for success in life. Our approach encourages active engagement and promotes lifelong learning. With wisdom at the root, it encompasses learning, truth, thinking, exploration, discernment and humility. 
Learning: The leadership team and a member of the governing body at St Andrew’s C of E Primary School are aware of the History curriculum as they are actively involved in moderating tasks with the History Leader. In addition, standards in History are high and match standards in core curriculum subjects, although pupils’ reading and writing skills are not a barrier to children representing their historical knowledge, as technology is used to minimise barriers to learning. 

Thinking: Teachers’ use effective open-ended questioning alongside ‘chilli challenges’ to stimulate and deepen children’s thinking. 

Exploration: Pupils experience a broad and deep History curriculum, which involves them exploring a range of primary and secondary sources.
Discernment: Children analyse both primary and secondary sources and by doing this, they develop skills in how to evaluate historical sources.

TO LIVE IN: Our ambition is for pupils to thrive, not just survive. The promotion of health and well-being and active citizenship contribute to this. These influence our relationships and behaviour. With grace at the root, it encompasses forgiveness, reconciliation, repair, love, awe and worth. 

Worth: Pupils learn about Crawley’s past, which enables them to develop an understanding of their locality’s historical background.

GOD’S WORLD: We want our pupils to understand more about God, to know and share His love and to follow Him into their futures. We want them to be contributors in their local community and respond to global issues. We aim to provide them with a broad range of cultural experiences. Our Christian distinctiveness is at the root. 

Implementation and Impact

history iii 2.pdf

 Assessment

A crucial part of our history curriculum is the use of effective assessment strategies. Strategies that are used include: pre-unit assessments enabling teachers to see pupils' starting points with both skills and knowledge; activating prior learning slides at the start of, and within, units; post-unit assessments and final topic outcomes to demonstrate progress in a variety of ways; a long term plan with clearly mapped out knowledge, skills and associated vocabulary; displays which reference key topic vocabulary and support pupil recall of key words and concepts; Knowledge and Skills Organisers in topic books which lay out the important facts and skills relating to each topic. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

History

 

 

 

 

Whole school History curriculum

 Knowledge and Skills Organisers

 This section of the website is under development.

Year 2 Spring Year B Turrets and Tiaras

Year 5 Autumn Year A Ancient Greece