Our History Lead is Nicole Chambers

Intent:

At Firfield Primary School, we strive to deliver an ambitious and engaging History curriculum, providing all children with the key historical skills they need as World Citizens. At Firfield, we will teach children how to be historians. This will be done by developing their substantive knowledge (knowledge about the past) and disciplinary knowledge (knowledge about how historians investigate the past and construct arguments) through a range of skills such as enquiry, analysis, evaluation and argument.

We use ‘Threshold Concepts’ throughout each unit of learning. These are Understanding Chronology, Communicating Historically, Interpreting History and World History. As children progress through the school, they will deepen their understanding of each threshold concept through the study of different events, individuals and civilisations.

Children will have an appreciation of the past and an understanding of how History gives us an insight into the world around us, developing their creative and curious minds. Activities within school and visits to the wider locality will be planned in to provide children first-hand experiences to develop their learning as historians. As World Citizens, we help children gain an understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world ensuring children understand the diversity of societies and the relationship between different groups. We intend to deliver a History Curriculum which is accessible to all, helping children to know more, remember more and therefore understand more.

Implementation:

During our history lessons, the children will develop an excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes. This knowledge has been carefully specified within the sequence of the unit, year group and key stage to ensure it builds upon previous knowledge and prepares the children for future learning. Teachers will assess the pupils throughout the learning sequence to ensure that the children can retrieve and apply their knowledge effectively. This will be achieved through low stakes quizzing, retrieval practise and end of unit assessment pieces. As the children progress through their history programme of study, teachers will focus on the retrieval of previously taught knowledge and skills so that children build a rich schema of knowledge which they can apply to future learning. The children will also be taught the skills required to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently in styles appropriate for their age and for a range of audiences. From this, the children will be given the ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry. Throughout their time at Firfield Primary School, the children will be given opportunities to complete local studies to enable them to learn about the history and culture of our local area.

Impact:

When pupils leave Firfield School, their learning in history will have equipped them with knowledge of a broad period of local, British and world history, together with an excellent range of historical skills, a good sense of chronology and their place in the world and history. As they have progressed, their growing historical knowledge will have helped them to understand how people and places have changed over time and how the past shapes our lives today. Through the development of the children’s creative and curious minds, our ambitious history curriculum will  develop in our pupils a deep love of learning which will empower them to embrace their curiosities as world citizens about the amazing world around them and recognise how history has shaped it.