History
History Intent, Implementation and Impact
At St George’s we provide our children with a History curriculum which enables them to become confident, creative and independent learners who can apply knowledge and skills, taught in Humanities, across the wider curriculum. We seek to broaden children’s real-life experiences both inside and outside of the school through enriching trips and educational visits which support and deepen our pupils understanding of the topics they are studying. Our curriculum is diverse, reflecting all ethnic minorities, LGBTQ and SEND groups, and is inclusive to all of our pupils’ needs. Through our Humanities teaching, children will become inquisitive and accountable citizens, who understand their role in protecting our world and environment through positive changes as they grow.
Across the course of a year, each year group studies a variety of carefully selected History topics. Each topic is contextually relevant to our pupils and has the scope to encompass key History skills. We align our History curriculum with other areas of teaching so that links across and between subjects can be made, giving children a broad base of knowledge, facts, vocabulary, real-life experience and contexts. Each History topic is linked to a famous person; each topic, and the people chosen, carefully reflects our school community and helps to raise children’s aspirations and cultural capital. We strive to provide our pupils with the language to articulate themselves within the subject, whilst being able to unlock meaning within Historical sources. To aid this, we employ a precise, tiered approach to the teaching of vocabulary which is mirrored in other areas of the wider curriculum.
In EYFS, children begin to make sense of their own life-story and family's history. In Key Stage 1, children focus on the core skills of chronology and sequencing. They also look at a range of different evidence in order to find out about the past. In Key Stage 2, the units selected enable children to build on previous knowledge and make links across the periods and events they have studied. Children learn skills within four main areas of chronological understanding, historical enquiry, historical interpretation and events, people and changes which build in complexity across the year groups. Within each topic, lessons follow carefully planned sequences which support children to build on their previous knowledge and skills whilst learning new content. Throughout each topic there is a balance of practical, hands-on learning, research reading and written recording of knowledge. Through the use of learning questions as the heading for each topic and lessons, children are encouraged to research and build on prior knowledge in order to demonstrate what they have learned. We make use of active formative assessment and carefully planned independent tasks, throughout the teaching of a topic, to check for understanding and provide ongoing feedback to our pupils.
The impact of our History teaching on our children is to:
- achieve high quality outcomes
- make outstanding progress in relation to their individual starting points
- have a sound knowledge of the chronology of major periods in world history
- have secure ability to use and apply historical skill
You can find the History Primary National Curriculum here.
You can find our curriculum here.