Intent
Our Curriculum is designed to cover all aspects of the National Curriculum, which has then been broken down into the skills, knowledge and vocabulary needed. This forms the history Curriculum map, which ensures a structured progression building upon children’s prior learning. Planned sequences of learning will take account of prior knowledge and skills development, building upon these to prepare for the next stage in their historical learning journey.
In our school, we want the children to gain a coherent and chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We want our children to become historians by being able to think critically; in order to ask questions, consider evidence and make arguments to support a theory about the past; thus gaining a greater understand of how our sociality has developed over time. At Moorhill, we believe that by looking at, and learning from the past we can make the future better for everyone.
Implementation
Our History curriculum has been designed ‘in-house’ using the skills and content set out in the National Curriculum. As a school, we have chosen to follow a topic based curriculum to allow children to embed their skills in a cross-curricular approach. Throughout our curriculum we have decide to focus on the theme of daily life to make our historical experience relevant the children.
At Moorhill Primary School, we believe that History encourages children to consider how the past has influenced the present, and how a variety of elements influenced people’s actions. In our history curriculum we develop the skills of researching, comparing and evaluating evidence, as well as exploring past events, civilisations and personalities and the concepts of chronology.
In order to enrich our curriculum experience, as historians we aim to enhance the children’s understanding of history by ensuring that the humanities are a central part of external educational visits and internal educational visitor. On these occasions, our children, as historians have the opportunity to handle artefacts as well as analyse a range of primary and secondary sources in order to answer a historical question/enquiry. The proportion of disadvantaged pupils who are supported by the pupil premium is above average in our school so we actively encourage, and plan for, our children to participate in these activities as they would not otherwise have the experience.
Impact
In History we want our children to be curious and ask questions; allowing them to learn more about the past. We want to immerse our children in history so that they recognise the importance of the past and that cultures can learn from their mistakes. As historians we want the children to think critically in order to ask perceptive questions, consider different evidence and arguments to develop perspective and judgement.
Ultimately at Moorhill, we aim to develop inquiring minds so that the children to understand the process of change, helping them to make sense of the present and how our society arrived here.
We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Pupil discussions and interviews about their learning
- An assessment of standards achieved judged against the skills and knowledge outlined in our Curriculum map (three times per year)
- Evidence of pupils work, gathered at the end of units.
By the time our children leave Moorhill Primary, as historians we want them to:
- know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
- know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind
- gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
- understand 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
- 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
History Gallery
