JeroundsHistory
'Bringing History to life for our young historians today!'
Purpose and Aims (Intent)
At NET, our History curriculums aims to ensure that all pupils:
- Have a secure chronological understanding of local, British and World History from the Stone Age up to the present day.
- Understand historical domains by carrying out their own historical enquiries, recognising similarities and differences, drawing contrasts, asking and answering questions.
- Can articulate how a significant event/person, leader, civilisation, movement (migration/invasion) and modern history have impacted society(strands).
- Evaluate and analyse a range of primary and secondary sources.
- Can collate all of their acquired knowledge and understanding to form their own opinions, and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives.
- Gain a historically grounded understanding of abstract and subject specific terms, and be able to use these confidently.
Organisation of the Curriculum (Implementation)
The history curriculum at Jerounds has been designed to impart essential knowledge, which is planned progressively, through the NET curriculum, across key stage one and two. This planned knowledge includes vocabulary and concepts. The concepts build upon one another year after year and refer to one another over time. The lessons are taught discretely but there is scope for each unit to be compared with others, for children to deepen their understanding and make vital historical links across periods. The curriculum has been written in order to support pupils to build their knowledge and to apply that knowledge as skills.
The focus in EYFS is understanding past and present. The context relates to the pupils themselves and then spreads wider to family and changes within the family unit. The past and present theme continues with chronological order. Links are made with old and new technologies, sequencing life events as well as identifying environmental changes over time.
All aspects of the history curriculum are covered throughout a pupils’ time at Jerounds. We ensure that learning is meaningful, ambitious, and has progression through each year and across each year group. The aim of our history curriculum is to equip children with skills and knowledge that they can take further into their school career as well as their life after education.
Each history unit has a unit overview document which details the topic name, historical strand, key skills, prior knowledge, core vocabulary and knowledge to be embedded.
History is spilt into six repeating strands that continue throughout the whole curriculum. These are as follows: civilisation, significant event, leader, now (modern history), movement (migration, invasion) and significant person.
As a historian, pupils will have the opportunity to develop skills in the following domains:
- Chronological understanding
- Interpreting evidence
- Ask and answer questions about periods in history
- Understand the impact of an event/person on society
Planning and Assessment (Impact)
Planning is progressive across the year groups. To support long term memory, skill domains are consistent and revisited throughout each key stage. Carefully chosen units of work have a clear rationale for their positioning within the curriculum programme of study. Pupils follow a sequence of learning, starting with an idea or question and learn new knowledge in detail through enquiry, culminating in a demonstration of knowledge learnt within the unit. Unit Overviews (see above) and Knowledge Organisers (examples at bottom of page) have been created to assist with planning and lesson sequences. Vocabulary, skills and knowledge are explicitly planned for in each unit overview. Pupils are supported in knowing, remembering, understanding and applying this through knowledge organisers, our teaching and learning policy/cycle and sequenced learning questions.
A wide range of physical and virtual resources are used to support with the pupils' learning, including historical maps, artefacts, data sets, images, newspaper articles, videos and voice recordings.
A wide range of assessment strategies are used to help assess students' knowledge and skills:
- Pupils regularly retrieve knowledge from memory to help them remember and organise their knowledge. This is coupled with feedback. Teachers think carefully about what pupils are being asked to retrieve and whether this prioritises the most important content.
- Systems are in place to support teachers to make accurate decisions when assessing pupils’ work. This includes supporting teachers with the range of skills for children to work towards in each year group.
- At the end of each unit, quizzes and/or graphic organisers are used for children to demonstrate the knowledge learnt within the unit.
- KWL activities (such as use of the Park-It board) are used regularly, giving pupils the opportunity to share prior knowledge and what they would like to discover during the course of a unit/lesson.
- Recap and Recall at the beginning of each lesson, to recall knowledge learnt in previous lessons, units and year groups.
- Mini Plenaries during lessons to assess knowledge gained.
- ‘Plenary’ at the end of each lesson to challenge children to question beyond their learning and discuss what they could be learning next – how could they extend their knowledge further?
- Book monitoring/Pupil Book Studies.
Enrichment
By enriching the curriculum, we hope to provide extended learning opportunities for our pupils. Giving the pupil the chance to study concepts with greater depth, breadth and complexity, while also helping children to pursue their own areas of interest and strength.
Enrichment happens in the following ways:
- Pupils are provided with historical-based educational visits within each of the key stages.
- School-based workshops are planned to further deepen knowledge.
- Use of artefacts/other resources for children to handle and discuss. Opportunities for the children to ask questions and make their own discoveries.
- Cross Curricular Links: Through our varied English curriculum in which we study a wide variety of historical texts, children are exposed to vocabulary and life-experiences from different eras. In Art and Music pupils learn about both historical and modern cultures from across the world.
- Around the World Week: During the summer term, each class studies 1 country and spends time learning about the history, geography and culture of that location.
- Home Learning: Pupils can explore history topics and units through their homework grids which provide opportunities for pupils to embed and enhance knowledge learnt in school.
Knowledge Organisers