Intent
History at Weston Favell is a powerful guide to preserve the future of humanity by understanding the successes and failures of what came before.
Through our curriculum, we aim to:
- Stimulate all children’s interest and curiosity about the past by developing their knowledge about British history and the wider world.
- Develop our children's mental timeline (schema) by cumulatively building their knowledge of periods and events.
- Develop children’s understanding of key historical concepts, enabling them to note connections, contrasts and trends across time periods.
- Teach children to understand the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups.
- Understand children’s own identity and place in the world, recognising how the past has influenced the present.
- Equip children with a balance of substantive (the facts) and disciplinary (learning like a historian) knowledge. This will enable children to articulate, critically debate and discuss their opinions and judgements on the past, using a range of evidence to support their arguments.
- Instil an appreciation of the work of historians by understanding how historical accounts are constructed, built upon and refuted; inspiring an interest in our learners, that they may pursue in secondary school and future life.
Implementation
Our curriculum has been carefully sequenced to ensure children obtain a solid understanding of key historical concepts and knowledge about the past. This is a knowledge-rich history curriculum, which entwines both substantive and disciplinary knowledge.
The following high-dividend concepts have been identified as:
- Legacy
- Power
- Change
- Culture
- Community
- Locality
- Trade
- Conflict
Impact
By the end of Key Stage 2, all children have a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world and have acquired the disciplinary skills of Historians being able to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments and develop perspective and judgement.
What our children say:
|
Year group |
What have you been learning in your lessons?
Have you learnt something new that you didn’t know before? |
What helps you to learn? |
Why is this subject important? |
|
EYFS and KS1 |
J- We have learnt about Neil Armstrong and Christopher Colombus. We found out about them being astronauts and explorers and one found America |
L- Our teacher helps us by teaching us vocabulary that we haven’t heard before E-The working walls help us recap work that we have already done E-Sometimes we put our drama hats on to make our learning fun so we can remember as well as our talk partners help us to learn as well |
J- Because you can learn about the past J – if you don’t learn it you won’t know what happened before you were born E- I love school and I find it challenging to learn new things so it’s important to get more knowledge |
|
KS2 |
A-We learn about prehistory including the stone age, bronze age and the Iron age and we also learn about the Romans M- We learn about things that happened a long time ago in the past A-We learnt that in the past, people hunted for food M- We learnt people had to move around to hunt food and to protect them from other tribes A- People built hill forts to protect themselves because tribes were having conflict and fighting each other |
A – We learn bit by bit so all the new knowledge is not too overwhelming M- We do some reading to learn more information A-We start our lessons by learning new vocabulary and say the key words together D- We have pictures and use drama to help us remember M / D- We start our lesson with a quiz or questions to help us put the learning in our long term memory |
D-If we didn’t know what happened in the past, we wouldn’t be able to learn from their mistakes M- We have religion because of the past A-It’s important to pass on knowledge from the past |