Paston Ridings Primary School
HISTORY
INTENT
Our aim at Paston Ridings is to encourage pupils to develop an appreciation and understanding of the past and make meaningful links to the present day. We will consider our values throughout our learning to consider the impact of decisions and significant people on our lives today. This will also develop our children’s ability to show empathy.
We have an emphasis on exploring both primary and secondary sources to allow our historians to explain how these sources give us an insight about how people around the world used to live and how these interpretations may differ. This will support them to question the validity of any information they are presented with. Pupils will be taught to make links between these sources and their prior knowledge, with the aim of developing engaged, motivated and curious historians to prepare them for throughout their education.
By linking our learning to a range of topics, children have opportunities to investigate and interpret the past, understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s past as well as that of the wider world, and to be able to communicate historically. This will also include debating and discussing their understanding of events. We will provide the children with an excellent knowledge and understanding of a range of historical periods, as well as ensuring children are supported to ask questions and follow their own lines of enquiry with independent research; a skill needed across the curriculum.
IMPLEMENTATION
Our learning will always build on from their previous learning so children are continuously developing their understanding of chronology that is displayed clearly on a timeline in school. Children will be scaffolded to make links and connections between time periods and significant people. In order to give children the opportunity to have a clear understanding of a time period, immersion days, visitors and trips are used regularly, particularly at the beginning of the topic, to engage and inform our young historians.
Subject-specific vocabulary and knowledge will also be explicitly taught so children have sufficient knowledge to delve deeper in sources and ask their own questions. 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. Knowledge organisers are used for pre-teaching and to support home learning.
The History topics taught will link to the whole school question for the term and have been developed to help children appreciate their own identity and the challenges in their time. Weekly whole school Big Questions will allow opportunities for children to share their historical learning and make links with other year groups to strengthen their meaningful responses to the termly question.
IMPACT
Our clear progression of topics and skills enables children to work at an age appropriate standard across each year group, and at a deeper level for those who are able. Children will be able to apply their knowledge in other curriculum areas such as English and Forest School to show their understanding. This will be displayed in our history corridor in school.
Talk is highly valued and children will be able to debate and discuss their historical understanding and knowledge and justify their opinions on events clearly and confidently. Throughout school, children will be engaged and interested in history and keen to ask questions. Our children will be able to apply their learning to answer our termly question thoughtfully using evidence from what they have learned.