History

OUR INTENT

At St Albert the Great School our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for History through a wide breath topic themed curriculum.  We aim to ensure that our pupils have, but he end of each key stage, long term memory of an ambitious of procedural and sematic knowledge.  

We believe that high-quality history lessons inspire children to want to know more about the past and to think and act as historians. With the use of our well-planned curriculum which is a coherent, progressive and a rigorous learning programme which engages and motivates our children and encourages them to see the world through the eyes of young historians.  We aim to develop children’s understanding of substantive concepts, which are revisited throughout different units throughout their time at St Alberts. Historical enquiry skills are built upon progressively throughout the units and include: Historical Interpretations; Historical Investigations; Chronological Understanding; Knowledge and Understanding of Events and People in the Past; Presenting, Organising and Communicating; and Substantive Concepts and Historical Vocabulary. In addition to this, progression of disciplinary concepts are also woven into units and include: Continuity and Change; Cause and Consequence; Similarities and Differences; and Historical Significance. 

We want every child to have an excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past. To have an understanding of how events in the past have contributed to shaping the world in which they live and to have the ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas; we feel it is important they have the ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources and be able to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past.  We want our children to truly develop and embed a sense of time, understand how civilisations were interconnected and to be exposed to a diverse range of history topics

Children should have a respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning and have a desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics. Through our teaching the children will have a developing sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways. 

IMPLEMENTION

Teachers personalise and adapt resource units from Twinkl to help plan and deliver their curriculum.  It provides a wide range of ‘topics’ for each age bracket – KS1, lower KS2 and upper KS2.  In order for children to know more and remember more in each area of history studied, the lesson sequence is structured so that prior learning is always considered and opportunities for revision and retrieval of key dates, events and facts are built into lessons. There are ‘Remember It’ sections at the start of lessons that revisit the key substantive knowledge. The use of ‘Retrieval quizzes’ also provide great opportunities to help make the key knowledge stick. This allows for revision to become part of good practice and helps build a depth to children’s historical understanding. Through revisiting and consolidating skills, we help children to build on prior knowledge alongside introducing new skills and challenge throughout the units. Revision and introduction of key vocabulary is built into each lesson. This vocabulary is then included in knowledge organisers, display materials and additional resources to ensure that children are allowed opportunities to repeat and revise this knowledge.

​Each class will have one unit of history and geography each term.  The children are given opportunities to cover the same objectives and skills, but in different contexts, allowing the children to deepen their learning. By having this opportunity for repetition of skills and objectives, children are able to retrieve prior learning aiding long term retention of knowledge and skills.  We believe that learning is a change in the long term memory, and this takes time.    ​

There is a high focus on vocabulary that all children must master and use within their work showing an understanding of why there are important to their topic. Where available, trips, artefacts and visiting experts will be used to enhance the learning experience.  Some language may be topic specific, but a lot of vocab is repetitive across the topics, tying  together the different topics helping children make connections through history. ​​

Learning objectives become progressively more challenging for Years 1–6 and reflect the curriculum expectations. We recognise that whilst it is important for pupils to increase and extend their knowledge of the subject, it is also vital that they have space and time to develop the concepts and skills of young historians.​

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IMPACT

Our History Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression, and build on the children’s knowledge and understanding of things that have happened in the past.  We not only focus on our specifically taught history lessons but where possible link history into other areas of the school including English, PSHE, and RE.  Children are assessed via teacher assessment at the end of each ‘topic’ to ascertain if they are working at age related, below or at greater depth.

We want our children to be passionate about the topics they are learning, and be engaged in the lessons.  This will be evident through lesson observations, book scrutiny and pupil voice, allowing us to make a comparative judgement about the learning taking place at St Albert The Great.  

When our pupils leave St Albert the Great, we want every child to have an excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past.  They will have an understanding of how events in the past have contributed to shaping the world in which they live and to have the ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas.  Our pupils will have the ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources and be able to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past.  They will have a respect for historical evidence and will have the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning and they will have a sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways. 

TOPICS COVERED

history progression map 2024-25