Intent: The intention of the history curriculum at Beeches Junior School is to enable all pupils to gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. The history curriculum has been devised to help develop pupils’ knowledge of the substantive concepts including empire, trade and invasion as well as deepening their understanding of events chronologically. Disciplinary knowledge is taught within and through the substantive content. Our aim to provide a broad curriculum providing knowledge, developing understanding of concepts, making links and instilling a love and curiosity of History in all our children. We provide a history curriculum which provides children with a good chronological understanding whilst learning about particular periods of history and key historical figures.
Implementation: We encourage children to approach history from a variety of angles. Children are given regular access to a variety of sources, ranging from primary written sources (from the period being studied) and later historical writing, to photographs, paintings and artefacts from the past. Through this, children are taught to consider what information can be reliably learnt and to analyse what this means in the historical context.
Our whole curriculum is shaped by our school vision which aims to enable all children, regardless of background, ability, additional needs, to flourish to become the very best version of themselves they can possibly be. We teach the National Curriculum, supported by a clear skills and knowledge progression. This ensures that skills and knowledge are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children. It is important that the children develop progressive skills of a historian throughout their time at Beeches Junior School and do not just learn a series of facts about the past. In History, pupils find evidence, weigh it up and reach their own conclusion. To do this successfully, as historians, they need to be able to research, interpret evidence, including primary and secondary sources, and have the necessary skills to argue for their point of view; skill that will help them in their adult life.
Impact: By the time the children at Beeches Junior School leave they should have developed:
- A secure knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from the historical periods
- The ability to think critically about history and communicate confidently.
- The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views.
- The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, forming and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
- A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
- A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgements.
The impact of History teaching is assessed in a variety of ways. Book monitoring, analysis of learning journeys, informal learning walks and assessments through Kahoot are used by the subject leader to gain an insight of History teaching in practise. In addition to this, the subject leader conducts informal pupil interviews alongside the child’s learning journey to ensure that learning has been achieved sufficiently and can be recalled when prompted.
We love having visits from Professor McGinty. He transports us back in time to discover more about our chosen topics whilst bringing the past back to life.
Greek Day.
Jack : "We did food tasting and dressed up in Greek costumes. I really enjoyed the day!"
Lee : " I loved doing a cat walk showing off my costume. We also tried some greek food. It was an exciting day!"
Anglo-Saxons
Working walls
