History
You have to know the past to understand the present.
Curriculum Intent
At Buckingham Primary School, we provide a high-quality history education that helps pupils to gain a coherent understanding of Britain’s past, as well as that of the wider world. Through our lessons, we want to spark children’s curiosity about the past, prompting them to ask perceptive questions, think critically and develop perspective and judgement. We want our pupils to learn, retrieve and apply key vocabulary, knowledge and skills. This is achieved by building on prior learning, making connections and using retrieval strategies to commit these to the long-term memory.
Our curriculum has been designed using the planning and progression information from ‘Key Stage History’ and is hinged on these key historical concepts:
- Continuity and change
- Cause and consequence
- Characteristic ideas and features
- Historical interpretations
- Historical enquiry
Early Years Foundation Stage
Our children begin at Buckingham learning about people in their lives and the roles they have. They focus on some of the similarities and differences between the past and now, through stories and their own experiences.
(Insert coverage of Understanding the World: People, culture and communities and our natural world EYFS)
Key Stage One and Key Stage Two
Through Key Stage One, the learning from Early Years is built upon through learning about our local area, the British Royal Family and significant events and people from the past. Our Key Stage Two areas of study are aligned with the National Curriculum and develop children’s understanding of the wider world, including ancient civilisations, empires and more recent historical periods. The pupils’ chronological understanding of British History is also an important focus.
(Insert coverage of historical concepts for Key Stage One and Key Stage Two)
(Insert coverage of progression of knowledge and skills)
Implementation
Our History curriculum is organised into areas of study and is taught across the year. When Geography areas of study are being taught in Key Stage Two in the spring term, some History lessons are taught alongside these to ensure that children’s chronological understanding is being consolidated.
All learning will start by revisiting prior knowledge. This will be scaffolded to support children to recall previous learning and make connections. Staff will model explicitly the subject-specific vocabulary, knowledge and skills relevant to the learning to allow them to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts. Learning will be supported through the use of knowledge organisers that provide children with scaffolding that supports them to retain new facts and vocabulary in their long-term memory.
Timely and regular quizzes are used to review learning and check that children know more and remember more. Learning is also reviewed on a termly basis, after a period of forgetting, so that teachers can check whether information has been retained. History assessment is ongoing throughout the areas of study and are used to inform teachers with their planning lesson activities and differentiation. Teacher judgements are made on assessment grids at the end of each area of study.