Intent
At Tutshill C of E Primary School, we offer a structured sequence of lessons to ensure coverage of the skills required to meet the aims of the National Curriculum. Delivered through our core Christian Values, we provide opportunities for children to show creativity, compassion, develop perseverance and show responsibility when learning about history. Our History curriculum aims to develop our children’s knowledge of historical events, people and places as well as significant periods of time. Challenging curriculum opportunities are planned so that children can use and develop their metacognitive skills. This broadens the children’s Global Awareness and ensures that learning is relevant and purposeful to them and the society they live in. Our Learning Behaviours support the children in developing children’s curiosity and a fascination of the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
Implementation
At Tutshill Primary School, learning will start in the Early years, where children will be introduced to vocabulary related to History as they explore the passing of time, events and people in their own living memory through stories and pictures. Children will also look at how things have changed from when their parents and grandparents were young till the present.
History is taught through the KeyStage History Scheme in Years 1 to 6. History is taught for half of each long term. Units are organised to allow children to focus on developing their knowledge and skills of things within living history and then building up to having a wider understanding. In order to support children in their ability to know more and remember more, there are regular opportunities to review the learning and key concepts that have taken place in previous units as well as previous lessons. In each classroom, educational, immersive displays are used and these answer questions help to create a rich learning environment for each History focus.
Children are given a Knowledge Schema which details key questions and vocabulary for each unit and these are found in their books at the beginning of each unit. This is not used as part of an assessment, but to support children with their acquisition of knowledge and is used as a reference document throughout the learning. Consideration is given to greater depth children and how they will be taught and how learners will be supported learners along with the school inclusion policy. We teach our weekly lessons in a creative and engaging way using the ABCDE model. In lessons, children ‘Activate’ previous learning; ‘Build’ on what they know; receive ‘Coaching’ to help them improve; ‘Do’ something to ‘Demonstrate’ their understanding and ‘Evaluate’ their learning.
All children are able to learn and achieve whilst developing the skills needed to become responsible, respectful and happy members of society that lead fruitful and productive lives. We broaden the children’s history experiences through the use of Outdoor Learning and we plan for effective use of educational visits and visitors, to enrich and enhance the pupil’s learning experience. We are developing unit boxes that are used to store primary resources for the different units in each year group. Children use their History books to apply skills and knowledge throughout the whole process of learning.
The history scheme has been designed as a spiral curriculum with the following key principles in mind:
- Cyclical: pupils return to the same concepts and skills again and again during their time in primary school. The first lesson in each unit is generally a retrieval lesson based on knowledge and vocabulary from earlier in the scheme and securing where the unit links chronogically with previous studies.
• Increasing depth: each time a concept is revisited, it is covered with greater complexity.
Impact
The impact of using a full range of resources, including display materials, across the school will have an increase in the profile of History. Through the high-quality teaching of History taking place, impact of the subject is seen in different ways such as; through books, posts added to their online learning journals (Seesaw), assessments and pupil voice. Work will show that a range of themes are being covered, concepts are revisited, and cross curricular links are made where possible. The learning environment across the school is consistent with historical technical vocabulary displayed, spoken and used by all learners. We ensure that History is loved by children across school, therefore encouraging them to want to continue building on this wealth of historical knowledge and understanding, now and in the future. 95% of children reach the expected standard for History in the end of unit assessments