Intent

Across the Fair Acre Federation, it is our intention that our children will be given a wide range of opportunities to develop their historical knowledge and skills enabling them to think as historians. 

As a result of history being taught throughout Early Years Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, we want:

• our pupils to gain clear knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. 

• our lessons to inspire pupils’ curiosity so that they want to know more about the past. 

• to enable children to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. 

• 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

Our children will be taught History in a way that ensures progression of the knowledge and skills set out in the National Curriculum (2014), and builds on previous learning. Teachers use the progression of knowledge and skills document to plan their history lessons. This ensures that the knowledge and skills taught are progressive from year group to year group. . Teachers may block teaching and learning of history but will ensure there is an appropriate balance and distribution of work across the year. It is important that history knowledge, from previous topics, is revisited to review that knowledge has ‘stuck’ and provide another opportunity to revisit the knowledge again to help it ‘stick’.

Teaching and Learning

Our main aim is to develop the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding in history and we use a variety of teaching and learning styles in our history lessons to achieve this. 

We believe children will be able to think like a historian when:

• They have access to, and are able to handle artefacts

• They go on visits to museums and places of interest

• They have access to secondary sources such as books, photographs, films, artwork etc

• Visitors talk about personal experiences of the past

• They listen to and interact with stories from the past

• They undertake fieldwork by interviewing family and older friends about changes in their own and other people’s lives

• They use drama and dance to act out historical events

• They are shown, or use independently, resources from the internet and videos

• They are able to use non-fiction books for research

• They are provided with opportunities to work independently or collaboratively, to ask as well as answer historical questions.

• They will have access to knowledge organisers for each topic

Impact

Our history curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work. 

Assessment is an integral part of the teaching and learning process. Teachers monitor progress in a formative way and adjust their teaching accordingly. The assessment of children’s work is on-going to ensure that understanding is being achieved and that progress is being made. Feedback is given to the children as soon as possible, and marking work will follow the school’s marking policy.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: 

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.

• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning/learning walks and observations.

• POP tasks (proof of progression)/comparative judgement

• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).

• Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s work is scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work. 

• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.

• Action planning for progress