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, taught through our topics, aims to develop historical skills and concepts which are transferable to whatever period of history is being studied and will equip children for future learning. These key historical skills and concepts, which are revisited throughout different units, are: Historical Interpretations; Historical Investigations; Chronological Understanding; Knowledge and Understanding of Events, People and Changes in the Past; Presenting, Organising and Communicating. Beyond this, we respond to events which affect society in a proactive and charitable way, to enable children to be educated and informed in current affairs. Within topics, teachers make reference to current issues on a global and national scale to ensure that learning is relevant and purposeful to children and the society they live in.
Implementation
The coverage of recent history in KS1 such as ‘Toys’ and ‘Travel and Transport’ enables children to acquire an understanding of time, events and people in their memory and their parents’ and grandparents’ memories. For KS1, we have designed a curriculum that can be covered chronologically in reverse to allow a full opportunity for children to really grasp the difficult concept of the passing of time. The intent in lower KS2 is that children can work in chronological order from ancient history such as ‘The iron age’ and then progress onto more modern history such as ‘The Railways’. Upper KS2 allows children to repeat and embed this sequence of chronology with a wider selection of ancient history such as ‘Early Islamic Civilisations’ and ‘Stone Age’ through to more modern history such as ‘World War II’ and ‘Leisure and Entertainment’. The repeat in KS2 of chronological order from ancient to modern allows for children to truly develop and embed a sense of time and how civilisations were interconnected. Children start to understand how some historical events occurred concurrently in different locations, e.g. Ancient Egypt and the Stone Age.
Impact
The impact of using a full range of resources, including display materials, will be seen across the school with an increase in the profile of history. The learning environment across the school will be more consistent with historical technical vocabulary displayed, spoken and used by all learners. Whole-school and parental engagement will be improved through the use of history-specific home learning tasks and opportunities suggested in lessons and overviews for wider learning. We want to 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.