History
Subject Lead: Mr Scrimshaw
A warm welcome to our History page. At St Joseph's, our curriculum has been designed to excite and inspire all of our children, ensuring it is purposeful, progressive and meaningful for every child.
Intent
Our intention is that every child will be an interested and inquisitive learner of History. We follow the National Curriculum programmes of study for each year group, aiming to create the very best historians, well equipped to continue their studies in history as they move throughout their education. We challenge pupils to think, act and speak like those working in the field would, by developing a consistent approach across all year groups. Substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge are explicitly taught. By substantive knowledge we mean the people, events and developments from the past that children will learn about. By disciplinary knowledge, we mean all the various processes that children need to develop if they are to get better at a subject. This can both refer to a process of doing something (e.g. interpreting a source) but also a thought process in order to understand big concepts such as change, continuity and consequence.
High quality history teaching in primary school is our ultimate goal. This forms part of a larger progressive curriculum from EYFS to Year 6 and into KS3 and KS4. Our units are cohesive and sequential, accounting for prior knowledge and key skills for meaningful progression. We recognise it is fundamental that pupils develop chronological knowledge, both in terms of sequencing periods of history and of having a clear sense of the characteristics of a particular period. Linking learning within and across key stages is essential to developing the bigger picture of history. In order to communicate their understanding, key historical terms are taught well and in context. The explicit teaching of the precise and subtly changing meanings of vocabulary linked to each topic has been developed over time with careful planning and revisiting allowing for long-term retention.
Historical concepts need to be rooted in the study of actual historical people, events, and development, which allows for the flow of the immediate narrative of learning and brings it to life and serves to build up an unseen and almost instinctive layer that forms our longerterm knowledge. It is this that underpins all future learning, giving us a chronological framework, historical terms and key concepts that enhance our learning across the curriculum.
Implementation
The planning of each unit has been rooted in the four key concepts of: Chronology, Communicating History, Investigating the past and Thinking like a Historian. High quality input from experts and educational resources, including detailed CPD, complement the delivery of specialist learning, just as high-quality teaching responds to the needs of children. Collaborative planning created by both Primary and Secondary colleagues, provides units of work, rooted in historical content, which focus on embedding challenge, metacognition, retrieval and practice.
Research around cognitive science is used to help children learn and remember more. Understanding is checked through spaced retrieval exercises. Throughout units of work teachers will make links and encourage children to connect past learning and historical knowledge and skills. Lessons are clearly linked to the threshold concepts of the National Curriculum and are planned in sequences that provide children with the opportunities to review, remember, deepen and apply their understanding. Formative assessments are used within lessons to gain understanding and shape teaching and learning. Wider opportunities are provided to enhance children’s experiences both inside and outside the classroom.
Impact
Pupils develop knowledge of History over time and explore their own locality through local history topics. They investigate and interpret the past, recognising that our understanding of the past comes from an interpretation of the available evidence. They build an overview of world history with an appreciation of the characteristic features of the past and that these features are similar and different across time periods and for different sections of society. Pupils understand chronology, how to chart the passing of time and how some aspects of history happened at similar times in different places. They can communicate historically using historical vocabulary and techniques to convey information about the past.
Pupil dialogue and work in books shows a high standard of history being taught. Pupils are able to talk and are able to demonstrate their learning with historical language and vocabulary about a particular period. They can make links and connections to what they have been taught previously. Historical learning and enjoyment is visible. Pupils will have experienced a wide breadth of study and cultural capital, be able to think, reflect upon, write and debate about the past. They will have an in-depth, long-lasting knowledge of historical people and periods and be able to think like historians, ready for KS3 and the wider world