History

History

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 and balanced curriculum that encompasses the British Values throughout; ensuring the progressive development of historical concepts, knowledge and skills; and for the children to study life in the past, with comparisons to modern life and living memory.

Aims

The National Curriculum describes a high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Teaching should equip pupils with the skills to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

The national curriculum for history aims to ensure that all pupils:

know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world.
understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts: understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales

Intent

At Moss Lane, we aim for a high quality history curriculum, which should inspire in children a curiosity about Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Children will recognise and understand significant aspects of the history in addition to changes in living memory and beyond living memory. Children will learn about the lives of significant individuals of the past and in doing so, understand the methods of historical enquiry and be able to ask and answer a variety of skills and knowledge-based questions. We want our children to relish and love learning about history. Children will gain knowledge and skills, through various experiences including educational visits and opportunities which enable them to deepen their understanding of who and what has shaped our world today.

Implement

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in history, we implement and provide a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school.

History is taught on a half-termly basis, focusing on the knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. History is taught as a discrete subject with cross- curricular links to other subject areas made wherever possible e.g. links to the English text, art topic or science unit of work.
Classrooms are home to displays, which reflect units of work covering humanities. This may be at the start of the unit to provide stimulus and support learning or at the end of a unit to celebrate children’s outcomes.
Key vocabulary is introduced to children within the unit of work and displayed in classrooms to support its use.
Children are given opportunities to show their existing knowledge and understanding, as well as their interests.
At Moss Lane we recognise that visitors and guest speakers, local visits, trips and outdoor learning support children’s understanding, help to make greater connections for them and brings history to life and so try to build these opportunities into topics.
Children explore topics in our well-resourced library of books and research online in our ICT suite to gather evidence from a range of sources to further support their learning.

Impact

Children at Moss Lane are passionate about history and enjoy learning about people and their lives. They speak confidently and in detail about periods in history and historical figures.
Outcomes in books evidence a broad and balanced history curriculum and demonstrate the children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge.
Children’s vocabulary is continually being expanded and embedded, giving them more confidence to tackle new ideas and dig deeper.
Our children are curious, like to ask questions and empathise deeply with others; relating the lives of others to their own values.