Four Swannes Primary School
Investors in Children
History Policy
Our school policies reflect Four Swannes’ commitment to an inclusive, creative, and exciting curriculum, based around high quality teaching and learning.
PURPOSE OF STUDY
A high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, and development perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.
AIMS
The national curriculum for history aims to ensure that all pupils:
Know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and have been influenced by the wider world.
Know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind.
Gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’, and ‘peasantry’.
Understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses.
Understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed.
Gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different context, understanding the connections between local, regional, national, and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious, and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
The children’s understanding and knowledge of historical facts will be broadened through the teaching of the following key elements:
Chronology
Interpretation of history
Historical enquiry
Organisation and communication
Range and depth
CROSS-CURRICULAR LINKS
When and where appropriate, opportunities will be encouraged to promote historical learning across the curriculum. This could be through links with:
Literacy – report writing, persuasive writing, speaking and listening, drama activities.
RE – telling stories.
Geography – map drawing, changing settlements.
Computing- using research tools, word-processing.
Art/DT – drawing of artefacts, building models to scale.
ASSESSMENT AND REPORTING
Assessment of history in both KS1 and KS2 will be based on teachers’ judgements and recorded at the end of every topic.
SUBJECT LEADER ASSESSMENT AND MONITORING
The subject leader works alongside the SLT to monitor standards of teaching and learning at Four Swannes School. A structured cycle of planning and work scrutiny, observations, and pupils and staff interviews will provide information to judge the effectiveness of the subject as well as future development points.
Review date: January 2022
Next review: January 2023
Subject Leader: Camilla Steel
History Curriculum Requirements
Purpose of study
A high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.
Aims
The national curriculum for history aims to ensure that all pupils:
Attainment targets
By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study.
Key Stage 1 National Curriculum Expectations
Subject Content
Pupils should develop an awareness of the past, using common words and phrases relating to the passing of time. They should know where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods. They should use a wide vocabulary of everyday historical terms. They should ask and answer questions, choosing and using parts of stories and other sources to show that they know and understand key features of events. They should understand some of the ways in which we find out about the past and identify different ways in which it is represented.
In planning to ensure the progression described above through teaching about the people, events and changes outlined below, teachers are often introducing pupils to historical periods that they will study more fully at key stages 2 and 3.
Pupils should be taught:
Key Stage 2 National Curriculum Expectations
Subject Content
Pupils should continue to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, establishing clear narratives within and across the periods they study. They should note connections, contrasts and trends over time and develop the appropriate use of historical terms. They should regularly address and sometimes devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance. They should construct informed responses that involve thoughtful selection and organisation of relevant historical information. They should understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.
In planning to ensure the progression described above through teaching the British, local and world history outlined below, teachers should combine overview and depth studies to help pupils understand both the long arc of development and the complexity of specific aspects of the content.
Pupils should be taught: