‘The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.’

 Maya Angelou.

History at Avenue Primary School

The National Curriculum aims that good history education will help pupils gain knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It inspires their curiosity to know more about the past encouraging pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

Aims:

As pupils progress from Foundations Stage to Year 6, all pupils should:

• 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.
• 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.

At Avenue Primary School, we follow the National Curriculum guidance, covering historical periods from ancient to more modern covering topics from local to world-wide events.

For more information lease follow the link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239035/PRIMARY_national_curriculum_-_History.pdf

We teach children to be open minded and enquiring thinkers who understand cause and effect. We want them to understand how people have lived in the past, why things changed and compare this to modern life.

We encourage first hand experiences through handling real artefacts and arranging field work visits to relevant sites of historical interest in the region or bringing in specialists for in-school workshops.

History in the Foundation Stage

In Foundation Stage, history is taught within the Early Learning Goals of Communication and Language and Understanding the World:

• Children talk about past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of family members.

 Key skills

• Remembering and talking about significant events in their own experience.
• Recognise and describe special times or events for family or friends.
• Develop a sense of change over time and help them to differentiate between past and present by for example looking at photographs of their life.
• Talk about past and present events in their own lives and in those of other members of the family or friends.
  Chronology:

• Past and present events in their own lives and in those of other members of the family or friends.
   

History in Key Stage 1

In Key Stage 1, each phase teaches history over a two year period:

 Chronology:

• Use everyday words and phrases to describe the passing of time.
• Understand and use the words past and present.
• Sequence events and changes in my own lifetime.
• Understand how to sequence events and artefacts such as objects or photographs.
• Use historical words and phrases to describe the passing of time including dates and decades.

Sequence events and changes in the past.

Subject outcomes:

• Pupils should develop an awareness of the past, using common words and phrasesrelating 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. 

History in Key Stage 2

In Key Stage 2, each phase teaches history topics over a two year period. This consists of:
 

Subject outcomes:

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