History

'A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.' Marcus Garvey

National Curriculum 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 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 contexts, 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.

Progression of History through school

Key stage 1

Pupils will develop an awareness of the past, using common words and phrases relating to the passing of time. They will know where the people and events fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods. They will use a wide vocabulary of everyday historical terms.

They will ask and answer questions, choose and use parts of stories and other sources to show that they know and understand key features of events. They will understand some of the ways in which we find out about the past and identify different ways in which it is represented.

Pupils will be taught about:

changes within living memory.
events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally.
the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
significant historical events, people and places in Rotherham.

Key stage 2

Pupils will continue to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history. They will note connections, contrasts and trends over time and develop the appropriate use of historical terms. They will regularly address and devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance. They will construct informed responses that involve thoughtful selection and organisation of relevant historical information. They will understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.

Intent

Our intent is that our teaching of History will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We aim for it to inspire pupils’ curiosity about the past and to know more about the past. We aim to enable children to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. We aim to teach children 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.

Implementation

The children at Mexborough St John’s study a range of significant people, periods and events that occurred in British and international history. The history curriculum makes full use of resources within the immediate and wider local area enabling children to develop a deep understanding of the rich history of their locality. As the children progress through the years, their History learning delves deeper and further into the past. Links and comparisons to our lives, in the present day, are explored.

When teaching History topics, we start with a key question to engage and focus learning. We prioritise offering our children a wide and inspiring set of experiences through drivers such as launch events, trips, visits, purpose and learning celebrations.

Key concepts of religion, government, trade, conflict and resolution, change and legacy are taught throughout school allowing children to understand what they mean in the contexts of different periods of History. Clear content sequencing, progression maps and knowledge organisers, place this in the context of long-term knowledge growth.

Intelligent repetition of key concepts enables children to strengthen memory over time, thus leading to deeper understanding. It is essential that children remember the knowledge that they have been taught so that learning ‘sticks’ for them to understand new knowledge, make learning links and apply this is different contexts. The core skills of recall, understand, connect, and apply are used to facilitate this.

Early Years:

Staff follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Statutory Framework which aims to guide children, to make sense of their physical world and their community. Listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our diverse world, which has changed over time. Pupils are introduced to vocabulary associated with history as they explore the passing of time in their own lives.

Key Stage 1:

History is shaped by numerous significant people and events. In Year 1, children learn about the lives and experiences of significant people from their own locality, Britain and the wider world. During Year 2, children learn about the adventures of polar explorers before studying the Great Fire of London to help them understand how the past is represented in different ways; using a range of sources to ask and answer questions. By the end of Key Stage 1, children have an understanding of why and how some events are so significant as to be commemorated today.

Key Stage 2:

In Key Stage 2, pupils will continue to develop their knowledge of our key concepts. Familiarity with these key concepts ensures learning is understood, links are made and applied to new contexts. In Key Stage 2, History learning delves deeper and further into the past. Children begin by exploring the role and impact of invaders during the Roman and Viking eras before understanding how life and society changed during key points in British History by studying the Tudor, Victorian and WWII eras. In addition to creating a chronological understanding of British History, children have the opportunity to learn about the diversity of societies from the wider world. Topics include Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. At the end of Key Stage 2 children have the opportunity to consolidate and extend knowledge using the theme of crime and punishment to compare and contrast different historical periods.

Differentiation for vulnerable groups (SEND, Pupil Premium, etc.)

Our curriculum is intended to challenge all pupils whilst still allowing all pupils to access the learning at a level that is suitable for them. Throughout the teaching sequence, we ensure learning is differentiated and support is deployed in appropriate places. This is done in a variety of ways including but not limited to: support staff, visual and practical resources or a simplified version of a task.

Impact

Research shows that repetition of course content leads to sticky learning; the transfer of knowledge from the short term to long term memory. At Mexborough St John’s, we achieve this through regular retrieval practise. Retrieval practise takes place at the start of every lesson allowing children to recap what they have learnt in the previous lesson as well as learning from further back. Children can speak with confidence about what they have learnt and how they can apply this to other parts of their learning. At the end of a unit, children collate their new knowledge in the form of a double page spread and are assessed on their knowledge through a topic quiz. Key concepts and misconceptions are then addressed in future lessons.

History Progress Model

Please follow the links below to view our History Progress Models. These document outline our rationale for sequencing learning in history and how progress happens placed in the context of long-term knowledge growth and skills development.

Year 1 - Conisborough Castle / Significant People in History / Remembrance

Year 2 - The Great Fire of London / Polar Explorers / Remembrance

Year 3 - The Romans / The Vikings / Remembrance

Year 4 - The Egyptians / The Tudors / Remembrance

Year 5 - Ancient Greece / The Victorians / Remembrance

Year 6 - Crime and Punishment / WW2 / Remembrance

Knowledge Organisers

Knowledge organisers are a summary of the key facts and essential knowledge that pupils need about a unit of work or a curriculum subject.

Knowledge organisers can be a valuable tool for both children, staff and parents. Class teachers are usually the ones who write the knowledge organiser, to set out their expectations of what pupils should learn about a topic – and to clarify their own thinking around what is important.

Pupils will review, revise and quiz themselves using their knowledge organisers. They are also useful tools for parents as they make them more aware of what their children are learning how to support them.

Our History Knowledge Organisers

Year 1 - Conisborough Castle

Year 1 - Significant people

Year 2 - The Great Fire of London

Year 2 - Polar Explorers

Year 5 - Ancient Greeks

Year 6 - Crime and Punishment

Year 6 - World War 2

Historical Enquiry

What is Historical enquiry?

A key cornerstone of history is historical enquiry. Historical enquiry is the process by which children use the same methods as a professional historian when investigating an aspect of history.

Quality history provision has historical enquiry at its heart. Through historical enquiry children can be shown how to ask questions, select and evaluate evidence and to make judgments about the past. It can also be a vital way of showing them that there is often more than one side to a story and that history is multi-perspective. Historical enquiry is all about asking questions or hypothesising about the past that we hope the evidence will help us to answer. At Mexborough St John’s, teachers use an enquiry based approach to teaching history.

The Enquiry Process

Teachers may provide a key question at the beginning of an enquiry to generate ideas and discussion. Children then use a variety of carefully selected historical sources to investigate possible answers based on the evidence they find. Examples of sources may be diary extracts, paintings, artefacts and photographs.

As the children progress they become more independent and can be asked to generate their

own questions and locate their own sources of information.

KS1

At KS1 children can be made aware of other peoples’ opinions and values and can be

given opportunities to explore alternative points of view in history topics which help

them to clarify and express their thoughts and feelings about different people in the

past.

The enquiry process means that children have to think their way through a problem by;

asking and framing question
undertaking research
making judgments
effectively communicating answers.

KS2

At KS2 children learn in more depth about different lifestyles, and ways of life in the

past, and become more aware of how these are different to their own.

At this stage, teachers move towards beginning the enquiry by asking children to;

Find something in the evidence which they think would be an interesting problem to solve or a situation which needs explaining. What questions would they ask to solve the problem?
Suggest hypotheses based on what they have read, seen or found out.
Make guesses and speculate on possible explanations
Test their hypotheses by using further historical sources to find evidence which will help them to confirm or dispute their original ideas.
Make final judgements based on the available evidence

History

'A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.' Marcus Garvey

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