History

At Greenbank, we are committed to providing a high-quality History education which is focused on a rich and relevant curriculum and inspires and enthuses our pupils to know more about the past. From Foundation stage and onwards, children are taught to value and understand the importance of History and to communicate their learning in oral, written and visual forms using appropriate historical language and techniques.

Intent

Children will experience History through interactive and stimulating lessons and undertake field trips relevant to their topics to bring their History learning to life. We support children in developing a sense of chronology from living memory to the earliest of human History through an enquiry based approach in which children are encouraged to investigate and interrogate a range of historical evidence and sources. Children will also learn about cause and consequence when looking at historical events and discuss how people’s actions have influenced events and shaped their world.

Implementation

History is a foundation subject within the National Curriculum. The aims of teaching History at Greenbank Primary School are consistent with our School Mission Statement and take into account the requirements set by the current National Curriculum. All children are entitled access to the programmes of study at a level appropriate to the needs of the individual child and we aim to develop the whole person by giving our children opportunities to reach the full potential in History.

The national curriculum for history aims to ensure that all pupils:
• To promote positive attitudes and enthusiasm for History
• To ensure the progressive development of historical concepts, knowledge, skills and attitudes.
• To introduce pupils to what is involved in understanding and interpreting the past.
• To develop an understanding of the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day
• To know how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
• To develop knowledge and understanding of significant aspects of the history of the wider world
• To gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
• To develop an understanding of historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically- valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
• To understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
• To gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.

National Curriculum
Key Stage 1
Pupils will be taught about the past, using common words and phrases relating to the passing of time. They will learn where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework using basic words and terminology to help them and identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods. They will be taught a wide vocabulary of everyday historical terms. Children will ask and answer questions, choosing and using parts of stories and other sources to show that they know and understand key features of events. They will study some of the ways in which we find out about the past and identify different ways in which it is represented.

Key Stage 2
Pupils will continue to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, establishing clear narratives within and across the periods they study. They will note connections, contrasts and trends over time and develop the appropriate use of historical terms. They will regularly address and sometimes devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance. Children will construct informed responses that involve thoughtful selection and organisation of relevant historical information. They will understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.

Impact

While history is about real people who lived in the past, its fundamental concern is the understanding of human conditions, set in the context of time. Such understanding comes from the study of life in the past, of thoughts, beliefs, emotions and actions, as people related to each other and their environment and as they encountered and solved problems. The History curriculum at Greenbank’s equips children with the skills necessary for living and working in the contemporary world, drawing from learning from the past. As the children see the diversity of human experience, and understand more about themselves as individuals, what they learn can influence their own decisions about personal choices, attitudes and values.