Intent

This policy outlines our approach to delivering History to reflect the aims of the school’s action plan. It sets out a framework to guide all staff. This policy compliments the 2014 National Curriculum and the EYFS Framework.

Stratton Primary School aims to deliver a rich and purposeful History curriculum to inspire a curiosity in pupils so that they are fascinated about the world and its people. This will help to ensure that pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world.  Our goal is to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past and how we can learn from it in the future.

During Key Stage 1, pupils will develop an awareness of the past, using common words and phrases relating to the passing of time. They will find out where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods. They will use a wide vocabulary of everyday historical terms. They will be encouraged to ask and answer questions, choosing and using parts of stories and other sources to show that they know and understand key features of events.

During Key Stage 2, pupils learn about significant people, events and places from both recent and more distant past. They learn about change and continuity in their own area, in Britain and in other parts of the world. They look at history in a variety of ways, for example from political, economic, technological and scientific, social, religious, cultural or aesthetic perspectives. They use different sources of information to help them investigate the past both in depth and in overview, using dates and historical vocabulary to describe events, people and developments. They also learn that the past can be represented and interpreted in different ways.

Implementation

Teaching and Learning:

• Teachers looking for opportunities to link to other areas of the curriculum.
• Using local and national resources to offer hands on experiences of the periods being studied.
• To research and develop resources to support diversity in History.
• Using The Stratton Curriculum, including the history skills progression and curriculum maps to support planning
• History sometimes drives a topic in a classroom, or is taught discretely.  
• Quizzing at regular intervals. The previous terms history unit needs to be re-quizzed also.
• Knowledge organisers are created by pupils. Pupils start a topic with anything they think they already know. At the beginning of each subsequent lesson (Geography or History), the children will have five minutes to retrieve any learning they can recall about the topic. Each week they should record these new pieces of knowledge in a different colour. This can also be used as an assessment tool by teachers if needed but its primary purpose is to develop children’s retrieval skills.
• Based on teacher assessments, teachers will plan sessions that will build progressively on children’s starting points so they can make clear connections in topic units and between other units they have previously studied. 

Every classroom will have a timeline on display that continues to develop across the year, adding new time periods as they are taught, allowing children to see a clear chronology. Clear links should be made between different time periods.

The National Curriculum objectives (in bold) are covered through the topics taught (knowledge organisers are available at the bottom of the page in order to help support your child's learning):

Impact

Children at Stratton Primary School will be confident and able to talk about what they have learnt in history using subject specific vocabulary and be able to link knowledge of different time periods, showing an awareness of chronology.

By the end of KS1 pupils should develop an awareness of the past, using common words and phrases relating to the passing of time. They should know where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods. They should use a wide vocabulary of everyday historical terms. They should 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 should understand some of the ways in which we find out about the past and identify different ways in which it is represented.

By the end of KS2 pupils should 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 should note connections, contrasts and trends over time and develop the appropriate use of historical terms. They should regularly address and sometimes devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance. They should construct informed responses that involve thoughtful selection and organisation of relevant historical information. They should understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.