At St Clement's and St John's Infant School pupils are inspired to be curious and passionate about history by asking why things have happened, and through enquiry, having the opportunity to form their own opinions. They will demonstrate knowledge, have an understanding of the past and consider how history has shaped the present and will shape their future.
The History 'Big Ideas'
The knowledge and skills children learn must be co-ordinated and coherent. In order to achieve this in our curriculum, we have identified the key concepts or overarching ideas within each subject. To enable the children to access them, we call these the ‘Big Ideas’.
In history these are:
Intent
At St Clement’s & St John’s Infant School, our vision is for every child to have confidence, compassion, creativity and curiosity in all areas of their learning, including History. We believe in every child becoming successful learners and leaders with a passion to live life to the full and change the world for the better. Consequently, we strive to inspire a curiosity within our pupils about history and the society in which they live today.
We aim to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for History; providing a broad and differentiated curriculum whilst ensuring the progressive development of historical concepts, knowledge and skills. We believe that a high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world (The 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England).
The aim of teaching Geography at our school is:
To develop pupils’ confidence in their knowledge about the history of Britain, significant aspects of the history of the wider world, the lives of significant people from the past and changes in living memory.
To develop a compassion and empathy for how people lived in the past and for why they may have acted the way that they did.
To inspire pupils’ curiosity to discover more about the past. We want to teach children how to ask and answer questions about the past, developing their inquisitive minds and a love for learning about history.
To allow all children to build on their historical knowledge and skills in creative ways such as through inspiring topics, independent and collaborative learning opportunities, fieldtrips and other exciting experiences.
To develop our key driver of communication by embedding opportunities throughout our history curriculum.
Implementation
At St Clement’s & St John’s Infant School, the Early Years Framework and the National Curriculum is the core of our History curriculum. We use a scheme provided by Rising Stars as a supportive resource
Our curriculum is designed upon a base of skills and knowledge that we want the children to learn and is taught in a progressive manner throughout the whole school. All objectives can be tracked from long term planning through medium planning to the weekly planning.
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning, teachers plan lessons from the History progression of skill document and deliver them through topics, which we select to excite and motivate our children.
Impact
We aim for all children to achieve age related expectations in History at the end of KS1 and for all children to have a secure understanding of the world around them.
The outcomes of the teaching of History across the school can be seen within the children’s topic books.
The assessment of History in KS1 is ongoing. The teachers regularly assess through marking and pupil discussions what the children have learnt. This information then informs the teachers with their planning, lesson activities and differentiation.