History

History and geography is taught alternatively over the half terms. We focus on ensuring there is progression across the curriculum and that it builds upon previous understanding of the declarative knowledge and procedural skills. We have 4 main threads within our history curriculum these are belief, society, significant people and significant events. Within every unit, the lessons link to one of these threads that lead from foundation stage through to Year 6.

Foundation Stage: In Early Years, understanding the world through History is an important part of our curriculum. ‘Understanding the World’ encompasses a range of early historical skills and knowledge. Children are encouraged to talk about past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of family members. Practitioners share historical stories, objects and pictures to prompt discussion using past, present and future tense.

Pupils are encouraged to develop a sense of change over time and are given opportunities to differentiate between past and present by observing routines throughout the day. They will also observe growing plants, explore the passing of seasons and time and look at photographs of their life and of others.

Children are encouraged to investigative behaviour and raise questions  to find out more such as,  'What will happen if..?', ‘What could it be used for?' and ‘How might it work?'

Use of language relating to time is used in daily routines and conversations with children for example, ‘yesterday', ‘old', ‘past', ‘now' and ‘then'.

KS1 (Year 1/2): We focus on placing information into chronological order, we look at sorting objects into past and present as well and ordering them on a timeline. We have lots of discussions about similarities and differences between times in history to compared to present day, this makes the learning real and relevant. Children begin to look at using sources and use them to identify and retrieve facts. We look at significant people such as Florence Nightingale and Neil Armstrong, as well as significant events such as the Great Fire of London.

KS2 (Year 3/4/5/6): We focus on learning how to place dates in chronological order across the AD/ BC divide. Children in UKS2 also look at layered timelines, Year 5 look at representing information in a layered timeline and Year 6 research evidence to create their own. In KS2 the children use primary and secondary sources to extract information and they begin to use the term ‘bias’ when looking at if a source is reliable or not. All children in KS2 learn the importance of asking historical questions linking to the main threads of beliefs and society to seek information.