History

Intent, Implementation and Impact Statement

Subject: History

Intent

History is about real people who lived, and real events, which happened in the past. History is concerned with sequence, time and chronology and is the study of evidence about the past; it gives us a sense of identity, set within our social, political, cultural and economic relationships. History fires the children’s curiosity about the past in Britain and the wider world and plays an essential part in preparing us for living and working in the contemporary world.

At Arden, our intent, when teaching history, is to stimulate the children’s curiosity in order for them to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding.

At Arden Primary, pupils consider how the past influences the present, what past societies were like, how these societies organised their politics, and what beliefs and cultures influenced people’s actions. As they do this, pupils develop a chronological framework for their knowledge of significant events and people. They see the diversity of human experience, and understand more about themselves as individuals and members of society. What they learn can influence their decisions about personal choices, attitudes and values. In history lessons, pupils are encouraged to find evidence, weigh it up and reach their own conclusions. At Arden, we teach pupils to research, sift through evidence, and argue for their point of view – skills that are prized in adult life.

Early Years

History is taught in Reception as an integral part of the topic work through child-initiated and adult led activities. The pupils are given the opportunity to find out about past and present events in their own lives, and those of their families and other people they know. In the Foundation stage, history makes a significant contribution to developing a child’s understanding of the world through activities such as looking at pictures of famous people in history or discovering the meaning of new and old in relation to their own lives.

Key Stage 1

During Key Stage 1, pupils learn about people’s lives and lifestyles. They find out about significant men, women, children and events from the recent and more distant past in Britain and the wider world. They listen, and respond to stories and use sources of information to help them ask and answer questions. They learn how the past is different from the present.

Key Stage 2

During Key Stage 2 pupils learn about significant people, events and places from both recent and more distant past. They learn about change and continuity in their own area, in Britain and in other parts of the world. They look at history in a variety of ways, for example from political, economic, technological and scientific, social, religious, cultural or aesthetic perspectives. They use different sources of information to help them investigate the past both in depth and in overview, using dates and historical vocabulary to describe events, people and developments. They also learn that the past can be represented and interpreted in different ways.

Implementation

Our history curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge, skills and vocabulary. To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in history, at Arden we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. History is taught as part of a termly topic and is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England.

The planning of learning always begins with the skills and knowledge that needs to be taught.Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of skills document. The progression document ensures that the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge that is taught is progressive from year group to year group. This ensures that the skills and knowledge is built on year-by-year and is sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all the children. A whole school topic overview outlines the period of study for each year group from KS1 to KS2. This ensures the acquisition of key knowledge across the school, building on prior learning.

Links to Geography and other subject areas are always explored and pupils are given the opportunity to apply their learning and make cross-curricular links where possible.

We use knowledge organisers to support and help pupils to understand the expectations by the end of each history topic. 

Intended Impact

Within history, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry-based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Whole school moderation meetings, where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is opportunity for dialogue between teachers.
• Termly teacher assessment of taught skills for each topic.
• Marking of written work in books. Outcomes in topic books evidence a broad and balanced history curriculum and demonstrate the children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge.
• At the end of every topic, children record what they have learned in comparison to their starting points.

Our whole curriculum is shaped by our school vision, which aims to enable all children, regardless of background, ability, additional needs, to flourish and to become the very best version of themselves they can possibly be.

Concepts

Through a progress model of thematic learning, the children will revisit key concepts during each topic. These key concepts are:

Knowledge Organisers

In History, we use knowledge organisers to make the vocabulary, subject knowledge and curriculum expectations clear. See below for examples.