New School Road, Mosborough, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S20 5ES

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Mosborough Primary School

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History

Curriculum Intent

Why is the subject important? 

At Mosborough we believe providing children with a challenging history curriculum is essential as it equips them with skills needed in life. We believe history helps learners to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups. It develops skills of critical thinking which means making reasoned judgments that are logical and well thought out. Our history curriculum supports children to understand that all knowledge is socially structured and the objectivity and reliability is therefore open to question through weighing evidence and developing  perspective. It builds a sense of identity and belonging on a personal, cultural, national and global level consequently leading to a better understanding of themselves and as members of society. Finally it enables learners to understand cause and consequence, similarity and difference, continuity and change, significance, evidence, chronology, empathy and perspective.

 

As we believe the teaching of history is essential we aim to:

  • Stimulate children’s interest and curiosity about the past.
  • Allow children to explore and question historical periods, significant events and people in the past.
  • Allow pupils to appreciate how things have changed over time.
  • Reflect on how history has impacted our lives today.
  • Help children understand society and their place within it so that they develop a sense of their own identity.
  • Allow children to plan and research different historical periods by using a range of sources.
  • Help connect ideas and events together in order to gain a sense of chronology.
  • Help pupils develop the skills of enquiry, investigation, analysis, evaluation and problem solving.

Implementation

History learning is facilitated through pupils pursuing a key question led enquiry approach, which encourages them to take increasing responsibility for their learning, think independently and achieve challenging subject outcomes. Our autumn term is named the discover term and is based on a history big question led enquiry, which allows for sufficient scope and time to really engage in high order subject skills. Whilst knowing more subject information as the pupils progress through the school it is important we are careful in our planning to ensure that there is always a balance between new content and the development of important subject skills and the ability of children to think critically about what they are learning and why. Our historical enquiries are carefully planned to enable pupils to construct knowledge, master subject concepts and generate questions of their own through the application of a range of critical thinking skills.

Impact

The impact and measure of this is to ensure that children are equipped with historical skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at Key Stage 3 and for life as an adult in the wider world. All children where possible will have been ‘immersed’ into the topic, they will have designed enquiries to pursue which are relevant, engaging and appropriately challenging in terms of anticipated outcomes which help pupils answer significant questions about events, changes and the lives of significant individuals. Evidence of key question led enquiries that have been structured to include a number of ancillary questions, will have ensured pupils progress gradually towards arriving at an answer to the overall big question. A wide range of sources of information like books, stories, eye-witness accounts, pictures/photographs/films, artefacts, maps, historic buildings, visits to museums, galleries and sites with ICT will have been used. Through teaching a challenging history curriculum our children will have built up a broad range of skills (included below) and will be able to apply these independently.

 

These are the skills the children will progressively learn throughout history lessons:

  • Recognise
  • Identify
  • Describe
  • Observe
  • Select
  • Categorise
  • Classify
  • Sequence
  • Connect and make links
  • Compare and Contrast
  • Recall
  • Reason/Speculate
  • Summarise
  • Synthesise
  • Construct informed responses
  • Interpret and explain
  • Demonstrate understanding
  • Empathise
  • Reach Informed Conclusions
  • Make reasoned Judgements
  • Reflect
  • Justify
  • Apply
  • Evaluate
  • Critique
  • Hypothesise – devise historically valid enquiry questions

Year group question:

National curriculum:

Foundation: What do we treasure?

-          Talk about past and present events in their own lives and lives of family members

-          They know about similarities and differences between themselves and others, families, communities and traditions

Year 1: How do we remember the past?

-          Changes within living memory. Where appropriate, these should be used to reveal aspects of change in national life

-          Events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally

-          The lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements

-          Significant historical events, people and places in their own locality

Year 2: How did it all begin?

-          Changes within living memory. Where appropriate, these should be used to reveal aspects of change in national life

-          Events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally  

-          The lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements            Significant historical events, people and places in their own locality

Year 3: How do people from the past shape the world we know today?

-          changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age

-          the Roman Empire and its impact on Britain

Year 4: What makes a great story?

-          Ancient Greece – a study of Greek life and achievements and their influence on the western world

-          A local history study

Year 5: Do our choices really matter?

-          Britain’s settlement by Anglo-Saxons and Scots

-          The Viking and Anglo-Saxon struggle for the Kingdom of England to the time of Edward the Confessor

Year 6: How can we know the truth?

-          A study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066

-          A non-European society that provides contrasts with British history

-          one study chosen from: early Islamic civilization, including a study of Baghdad c. AD 900; c. AD 900; Benin (West Africa) c. AD 900-1300

Supporting documents and useful links:

Our History Policy can be viewed here

Our History skills progression can be viewed below

Our History long term curriculum can be viewed here