Vision Statement
Together we inspire one another to love learn respect and forgive, rooted and built up in Christ, so that every member of our school community can develop and flourish; united in mutual respect with a sense of belonging.
Intent of the teaching and learning of History
We teach history to learn about, and from, the past through providing a wide and varied range of experiences that enable us to revisit the past.
It is of the utmost importance that children gain knowledge and understanding of the history of the United Kingdom, the wider world and their local area, thereby giving them an understanding of how they fit in to the world and ensuring children feel like they belong.
Implementation of the teaching and learning of History
The history curriculum is intended, in Key Stage 1, to enable children to acquire an understanding of time and of events and people in their and their parents’ living memory. It is designed chronologically in reverse. Young children have very little concept of time, so we have chosen a curriculum which includes events in their own personal history and then moves back in decades to their parents’ and grandparents’ histories. In Key Stage 1, the aim is for pupils to handle artefacts, listen to first-hand evidence and testimony and to watch video clips to gather information together about the past. We will also factor in trips where they are available.
In Key Stage 2, the intent is to follow topics in chronological order so that they can develop a sense of time and how civilizations were inter-connected. The curriculum builds pupils’ understanding of time, chronology, how people lived. Historical skills and concepts build progressively across the key stage. We will follow part of the national curriculum but will go past the reign of Edward the Confessor to modern Britain.
History provides an excellent opportunity for children to develop excellent enquiry skills, for instance how events/significant people have impacted on our life today. This can be evidenced topic books, displays, pupil voices and data.
Impact of the teaching and learning of History
The impact of teaching and learning of History equips pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils 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. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups. It also helps children gain a sense of their own identity within a social, political, cultural and economic background. Because of this, we feel it is important for the subject to be taught discretely as well as incorporated within other curriculum subjects such as English and Art.
At St Joseph’s, we continuously assess this through, questioning, mid lesson plenaries, discussion and debate. This supports us in improving our teaching and learning, and thereby the outcomes for our pupils as it highlights any gaps in learning, consequently highlighting areas that need to be developed further.
Mrs Cartwright (Subject Lead)
