History

At St Leonard’s Lower School, we are growing and learning together with God’s Love and our Christian values are embedded in all that we do.

We recognise that every child is a unique individual within God’s creation and it is our aim is to provide learning opportunities that enable our children to develop deep roots to enable them to flourish and succeed.

Our History curriculum is ambitious and inclusive for all, enabling each child to learn and develop the skills and knowledge they need to thrive. It is a relevant, creative, exciting and challenging curriculum planned to support all learners to achieve their full potential, to know more and remember more, and to be prepared for their next steps in learning.

Our aim is to promote spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding through appropriate curricular opportunities with particular reference to equality and diversity.

INTENT- What we want to achieve

At St Leonard's Lower School we are Historians! We intend to inspire our children to develop a love of history and to see how it has shaped the world they live in today. We feel that is important for children to understand that the past influences the present and the future. We want to encourage children to learn that they can’t change history but what they can do is learn from it and then use information learned to help shape a better future.

At St Leonard's we want our History curriculum to enable our historians:

To have a broad understanding of, and celebrate diversity and equality in British and World History
To develop an awareness of the past, within a chronological framework
To investigate people and events and develop an understanding of why things happened and how it influences our lives today
To engage in a wide range of enquiry using different media
To communicate their ideas based on research
To become confident resilient learners through growth mind-set culture
To answer questions based on key concepts in History.

IMPLEMENTATION- How we will teach History

We use Twinkl PlanIt resources to ensure that our teaching and learning progressively covers the skills and concepts required in the national curriculum. Our History scheme aims to develop children’s understanding of substantive concepts, which are revisited throughout different units. Historical enquiry skills are built upon progressively throughout the units and include: Historical Interpretations; Historical Investigations; Chronological Understanding; Knowledge and Understanding of Events and People in the Past; Presenting, Organising and Communicating; and Substantive Concepts and Historical Vocabulary. In addition to this, progression of disciplinary concepts are also woven into units and include: Continuity and Change; Cause and Consequence; Similarities and Differences; and Historical Significance.

For KS1, we have designed a curriculum that can be covered chronologically in each year group to allow a full opportunity for children to really grasp the difficult concept of the passing of time. Therefore, in year 1, children will start with a unit that is the furthest back in time and end with a unit that looks at some more recent history. This order repeats again in year 2. In KS2 we have planned our curriculum so that children work in chronological order from year 3 to year 4 on some of the core British and World history study units taken from the national curriculum KS2, starting with Ancient Egyptians and Stone Age to Iron Age in year 3 and then progressing onto more modern history in Y4 with World War II and The Railways units. The aim is for children to truly develop and embed a sense of time, understanding how civilisations were interconnected and to be exposed to a diverse range of history topics. Children start to understand how some historical events occurred concurrently in different locations.

In order for children to know more and remember more in each area of history studied, our lessons are structured so that prior learning is always considered and opportunities for revision and retrieval of key dates, events and facts are built into lessons. Each unit of work begins with a Chronology lesson to enable pupils to place their Historical learning in context with what they have already learned. 'Remember It' sections at the start of lessons often revisit key substantive knowledge and retrieval quizzes also provide great opportunities to help make the key knowledge stick. All of the above allows for revision to become part of good practice and ultimately helps build a depth to children’s historical understanding. Through revisiting and consolidating skills, our lessons and resources help children build on prior knowledge alongside introducing new skills and challenge. Revision and introduction of key vocabulary is built into each lesson. This vocabulary is then included in knowledge organisers, in display materials and additional resources to ensure that children are allowed opportunities to repeat and revise this knowledge.

In addition to the above we:

Ensure high levels of confidence and subject knowledge are maintained, through regular discussions with the history lead, membership of the Historical Association, whole-school moderation, staff meetings, and CPD.
Link learning to high quality literacy texts
Link learning in History to other areas of the curriculum (English, Art, Design, Geography, Science) and to High Quality Texts to develop depth of understanding (For example, The Egyptian Princess and Escape to Pompeii)
Develop high quality resources that are tactile, IT based, written graphic and photographic
Allow children to handle sources and develop research skills
Provide multisensory activities and a wide variety of learning experiences to motivate deep learning, curiosity and investigation
Use visits, visitors and 'experience days' to make learning meaningful and to enhance depth of knowledge
Provide opportunities for pupils to work independently in pairs, in small groups and as a whole class inside and outside the classroom
Use precise tracking and assessment to move pupils’ learning forward, ensuring the learning objectives and success criteria are clear and relevant
Develop pupils’ ability to evaluate their own and their peers work as well taking pride in the presentation of their work by applying our school handwriting scheme- Nelson Handwriting.
Monitor the teaching of History regularly through lesson visits, book looks and pupil voice.

IMPACT: We want our Historians to achieve these outcomes:

By the end of the Foundation Stage most children will be able to:

Find out about past and present events in their own lives, and in those of their families and other people they know.

By the end of KS1 most children will be able to:

Show their developing sense of chronology by using terms concerned with the passing of time.
Place events and objects in order on a simple time line.
Be aware of how some lives were similar or dissimilar to others.
Understand that their own lives are different from those of children in the past.
Recognise that there are reasons why people in the past acted as they did.
Begin to ask questions and know where to find the sources to answer these questions.
Explore some local history.

By the end of Lower KS2 most children will be able to:

Recognise that the past can be divided into different periods of time.
Show knowledge and understanding of some of the main events, people and changes studied. This should include local, world and British history.
Note and comment on similarities of time periods.
Devise their own questions.

Monitoring of the History curriculum takes various forms. A key component of this is pupil self-evaluation and the confidence they have in discussing work they have completed. Key questioning skills are built into lessons, child-led assessment (such as success criteria grids, jigsaw targets and KWL grids) and low-stakes assessment (such as retrieval quizzes and summative assessments), all inform and target next steps in learning. Work and assessment monitoring throughout all year groups also takes place once a term to compliment this, allowing leaders to measure progression across the school and to ensure our Historians have the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge fully. Examples of our Historians' work is exhibited throughout the school, both in classroom and communal displays.

Progression of Knowledge and Skills

Knowledge Organisers

Barriers to and solutions for Engagement, Achievement and Progress in History.pdf

Year 4 WW2 Evacuee Day and Trip to Bletchley Park

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