Our History Vision - Intent
At St Thomas’ Leesfield, we shape our History curriculum to ensure it is fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for History; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum that encompasses the British Values throughout; ensuring the progressive development of historical concepts, attitudes, skills and knowledge (ASK); and for the children to study life in the past as well as identify similarities and differences and how things have changed over time.
We believe that high quality history lessons encourage our children with critical thinking, enhance the ability to weigh evidence and generate arguments, develop chronological understanding and develop their sense of perspective.
At St Thomas’ Leesfield, we aim for a high quality history curriculum which should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Our teaching equips pupils with knowledge about the history of Britain and how it has influenced and been influenced by the wider world; know and understand about significant aspects of the history of the wider world such as ancient civilisations and empires; changes in living memory and beyond living memory; learn about the lives of significant people of the past; understand the methods of historical enquiry and be able to ask and answer questions. We want children to enjoy and love learning about history by gaining and improving their attitudes, skills and knowledge, not just through experiences in the classroom, but also with the use of fieldwork, particularly our local history-rich environment, well-planned and exciting educational visits together with inspiring visitors to school.
Implementation
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in history, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. History is taught as part of a weekly or two weekly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. We teach our children using a variety of resources to enable them to develop an understanding of the history, give them skills to question and explore and enjoy their topics.
Children in EYFS learn also through a topic-based curriculum that focuses on developing their knowledge and understanding of the people from the past and present (Early Learning Goal). We ensure children are curious, engaged and given focused and independent activities that enhance their experience of their lives and help them to reflect on and learn from the recent past. We also give the children opportunities to explore their past and the past of their families and give them real- life experiences that help them to put history into their own unique contexts.
Throughout school, each topic gives the children the chance to ask questions about their learning. The children have 6 or 9 ‘sticky learning’ objectives that they will study and learn during the topic and hopefully these will be embedded into long-term memory.
At Leesfield, we ensure that history has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences. For example, exploring local history and the plight of local people including Annie Kenney and the local suffragette movement. Our children have the huge advantage of a history-rich local environment which we utilise very effectively and this helps our children to really understand the impact of history on the local people and community past and present.
Our topics are engaging and exciting providing the opportunity for children to enjoy their learning and research their interests further. Furthermore they foster awe and wonder and actively motivate the children to ask ‘why’. Through a variety of topics, vocabulary will be developed and the importance of suitable and technical words encouraged. We select the vocabulary necessary to access learning and use the Word Aware Programme to develop topic or selected words. These are embedded with quick daily activities to teach the meaning and application of selected words.
Impact
The impact and measure of our history curriculum is to ensure that children at St Thomas’ Leesfield are equipped with historical skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at Key Stage 3 and for life as an adult in the wider world.
We want the children to have thoroughly enjoyed learning about history and to ignite a passion for the past, therefore encouraging them to undertake new life experiences now and in the future. Projects already completed by the children have led to us achieving Heritage Schools status and we aim to maintain this by increasing the prominence of local history delivered through our topic based curriculum.
Our History Learning Journey
Please select the document below.
|
Learning Journey - History - Reception - Year 6 | [pdf 245KB] |
|
History
Please use the links below to access our learning resources.