Intent
At St. Andrew’s, our history curriculum has been set up to provide a high-quality education that inspires pupils' curiosity about the past, develops their skills as historians, and helps them to understand the significance of historical events and people.
From Reception to Y6, we aspire to provide a tailored curriculum that reflects our school values, our local area and a coherent understanding of the wider world.
Our aim is to create a history curriculum that is inclusive, diverse, and reflective of our pupils' cultural heritage. It is also modified to suit individual learners’ needs. We want our pupils to develop an understanding of different cultures and traditions, as well as foster mutual respect and tolerance for others. At St. Andrew’s our history curriculum builds in our core values of Courage, Love and Friendship and promotes British Values.
Implementation
At St. Andrew’s, we have a well-designed and sequenced curriculum, that builds on prior knowledge and provides opportunities for depth of understanding. We implement this in a number of ways:
- our Knowledge Organisers explicitly show the over-arching theme, prior learning and unit aims as well as key dates, significant people and subject -specific vocabulary.
- lessons are adapted to ensure that students at all levels can access the curriculum by following Roshenshine’s Principles and methods from Teaching Walkthrus. For example: modelling, scaffolding and identifying key vocabulary for each lesson.
- our curriculum in KS2 is organised into key historical periods and topics, ensuring coverage of important events, people, and civilizations. This includes looking at people who lived and worked in Britain (and the local area) and their achievements.
- using the Rising Stars scheme as a base, teachers adapt lessons, which align with the National Curriculum guidelines and allow for a balance between knowledge acquisition, historical enquiry, and skills development. We have also added important elements to units, which we feel represent our school community, ethos and area
- we use a range of primary and secondary sources and artefacts, to enhance and consolidate pupils' engagement and understanding.
- carefully planned guest speakers, workshops and visits to historical sites are used to enrich the curriculum and enhance our pupils’ learning across the school. For example:
EYFS: Visit from babies and toddlers – Growing Up
Y2: Great Fire of London Workshop – Bonfire Night and the Great Fire of London
Y4: Tower of London – Crime and Punishment
Y5: Enfield Caribbean Society speakers – Migration
- opportunities for authentic cross-curricular connections are planned into our history curriculum, enabling pupils to make links to other subjects. For example, in Y4 English lessons, students write a biography of Howard Carter, which links to their study of the Ancient Egyptians. In Y5 Art, children create 3D masks based on their knowledge of the Kingdom of Benin. This approach helps to deepen their understanding and encourages them to make connections
- specific learning weeks such as Parliament Week and Black History Month, support our on-going exploration of significant people who made a difference and themes such as women’s rights, difference and disability and democracy.
- we promote a growth mindset to develop pupils' resilience and perseverance in historical enquiry. Pupils are given an overarching question or theme, which encourages them to ask thoughtful questions, evaluate evidence, develop arguments, and consider alternative viewpoints. This helps them develop analytical and evaluative skills, enabling them to form their own interpretations of historical events and develop a greater understanding of the complexities of the past.
Impact
Through formative and summative assessments such as recall of prior learning, retrieval practice and end of unit assessments, we can see the impact of our curriculum. This is also reflected in the achievements, attitudes, and knowledge of our pupils.
By the time they leave our school, our pupils will have a secure understanding of key historical concepts, significant events, and the impact of individuals and civilisations on our world. They will have developed skills in historical enquiry, critical thinking, analysis, and evaluation.
Pupils at St. Andrew’s demonstrate a genuine interest in history, understanding its relevance to their own lives and society. The regular opportunities we give our children to see history come to life in museums and exhibitions, helps them to make connections in their learning.
With regular spaced retrieval practice and a focus on prior learning, we aim for pupils to make connections across different historical periods, recognising patterns, causes, and consequences of events.
Pupils will have a solid foundation of historical knowledge that will support their transition to secondary school and enable them to engage in analytical discussions and debates about the past.
The impact of our personalised history curriculum goes beyond academic achievement. It equips our pupils with valuable skills for their future lives, fostering a sense of moral responsibility and cultural awareness. For example, we hope for our pupils to be better prepared to play an active role in their local communities, making positive contributions to society as a whole.
History
Across the school from Year 1 to Year 6 the children are taught three topics of History a year. The children are a taught a range of historical skills which they develop upon each year. These skills include historical knowledge (constructing and sequencing the past), historical concepts (change and development and cause and effect) and historical enquiry. The children will also develop a wide range of historic vocabulary within each topic and use a range of historical sources to enthuse and broaden their learning experiences.
Below are the three units of historical study that will be taught in each year group.
Year 1: My Family History, The Greatest Explorers, Great Inventions: Transport
Year 2: Bonfire Night and The Great Fire of London, Holidays, Our Local Heroes
Year 3: The Stone Age, The Iron Age and the Bronze Age, Local History
Year 4: The Ancient Egyptians, Roman Britain, Crime and Punishment
Year 5: The Anglo-Saxons, The Kingdom of Benin, Journeys
Year 6: The Maya Civilisation, The Ancient Greeks, The Impact of War
We also supplement our curriculum with educational visits and speakers). As part of our local history units, the children will also have the opportunity to undertake trips around the local area. These include Forty Hall, Enfield Town and Chase Green War Memorial.