Intent:

History helps you to understand the past, the things that have happened and the reasons why things are as they are. 

History teaches us how places were in the past and the way they have changed and stayed the same.  We study the lives of people in the past and learn how things were, how things have changed and how they compare to now.

With history we can travel through time within our own lifetime and beyond!

Implementation:

Our history curriculum is rigorously sequenced so that our children’s historical knowledge, understanding and skills build over time. We have selected and designed our units carefully so that our curriculum includes diverse narratives and voices. These units are selected carefully, then a knowledge organiser, created by teaching staff , supports the sequential planning of the unit.

Within our classrooms, we follow rich and ambitious lines of enquiry by answering big questions.  We teach children the knowledge they need in small steps to answer these challenging questions successfully. Studying history in this way inspires children’s curiosity, encourages them to ask critical questions and enables them to have a better understanding of the society in which they live and that of the wider world. In our history curriculum, we have thought about key threads that run through the units of learning.  These include invasion and settlement, legacy, empire, civilisation, monarchy and society. By carefully mapping these themes across the units and revisiting them in different sequences of learning, we ensure children make links and gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, national and international history; and between short- and long-term timescales.

Our  History curriculum aims to excite the children and allow them to develop their own skills as historians. We encourage regular references to timelines and consider carefully how topics  fit together as well as a hands on approach involving artefacts and WOW days where appropriate so as to bring history alive to our young learners. As part of a topic lead programme, it allows opportunities for cross curricular links to be made to ensure the children have many occasions where by they can apply their knowledge and understanding.Children are provided with external enriching opportunities wherever possible,such as  school visits to areas of local interest as well as visitors in school.

Impact:

Our children leave St Walburga’s with a well developed curiosity about people and events from the past , the skills needed to ask probing and reflective historical questions and to seek appropriate answers to them, and a sense of responsibility for their role in ensuring that past mistakes are not repeated. 

They are given a wide range of opportunities to:

-explore a wide range of skills and knowledge

-make sense of the world around them

-understand how events of the past have shaped the world that it is today

-consider their responsibilities on issues surrounding the environment, local and global communities

-develop new interests and hobbies 

Our History curriculum starts the children off on a learning journey that ensures they are ready for their next steps at secondary school with the skills needed to be reflective and articulate as historians. In addition, they leave our school with a wide range of enriching experiences they have encountered during their time here.