Our children are active historians engaged in enquiry-based lessons which develop their historical knowledge and conceptual understanding within a cross curricular approach. We provide a curriculum that stimulates the children’s interest and understanding of important historical periods and the lives of people who have lived in the past.
Aims
Through the themed enquiry-based approach we aim for children to:
Develop chronological understanding of periods of time.
Describe and make links between significant events and the lives of people within and across historical periods.
Recognise that the past is represented and interpreted in different ways.
Develop critical skills of enquiry, investigation, analysis, evaluation and presentation. Be able to compare and contrast, identify change and continuity, cause and consequence and distinguish between fact and opinion.
Use a range of sources of information to gather evidence; e.g. documents, printed sources, Internet research, film, artefacts, pictures, music, workshops, experimental archaeology, buildings and sites.
Communicate their knowledge and understanding of History in a variety of ways; e.g. different writing genre, art, drama, D.T, dance, music, computing, reconstructions, re-enactments, presentations, etc.
Develop an awareness of how the past has contributed to the present and might influence the future.
Implementation
In the Foundation Stage, as well as children learning about History through the ‘Knowledge and Understanding of the World’ area of the Early Learning Goals and incorporating these in to the whole school topics, they study the history of familiar aspects of their lives.
In KS1 and KS2, children are taught History through a themed cross-curricular approach, linking whole school topics across a wide variety of subjects, including History, English, Maths, Geography, Computing, Art, D.T, Drama, Music and Dance. Historical skills are taught through carefully planned activities.
Curriculum weeks are planned to give children a richer experience of the topic, as well as inviting outside workshops to visit in school and going on trips to significant sites.