History
Intent
The intent of our history curriculum at Kerr Mackie Primary School is to instil a love of history in our children. Our aim is to give our children the knowledge and understanding of the past, to enable them to have a greater insight into the world and the community in which we live. By gaining an understanding of past achievements and experience, children will obtain their own sense of self and identify enabling them to become confident, knowledgeable, learners.
This will be achieved through creative, engaging and challenging lessons threaded throughout the curriculum. Children will be encouraged to think critically, ask and answer historical questions whilst examining the validity and reliability of sources. To embed learning, children will gain real-life experiences inside and outside of school through educational trips, wow-days and utilising local members of the community and their experience.
Knowledge and skills will be built on as children progress through school, this will enable deeper learning and understanding of history. Basing our curriculum on the History National Curriculum ensures that areas are revisited throughout the primary years with clear progression in both historical skills and knowledge.
Implementation
To ensure a consistent approach to the teaching of history across the school each year group has a long-term and medium-term plan to refer to, these are closely matched to the National Curriculum objectives.
The Progression of Skills document provides teachers with a detailed breakdown of skills for each year group and therefore ensures that children will progress through the school developing their skills and embedding their historical knowledge and understanding. This will be evident in books, displays and through pupil-voice interviews.
We will use learning walks and book looks as a way to ensure consistency and to highlight key areas of strength. This will offer opportunities for peer-to-peer support and where high-quality teaching and learning can be shared and developed across the school as a whole.
To install a love of history, we will ensure that children experience history through a ‘hands-on’ approach. This will be done through, wow-days, local visits, visitors to the school and artefact boxes. Teachers will be offered guidance on how and where to develop their history topics and lessons.
In order to develop children's knowledge and understanding of historical concepts and vocabulary will be planned for and is referred to throughout learning.
Cross-curricular outcomes in history are specifically planned for, with strong links between the history curriculum and literacy lessons enabling further contextual learning. Children will practice and embed historical skills and knowledge through oracy. They will have the opportunity to build on their language and concept base through activities such as debating and presentations.
Impact
By implementing an exciting and engaging history curriculum at Kerr Mackie Primary School, children will develop a love for history. The children will know more, remember more and understand more. Children will understand and use the key skills of chronological understanding, knowledge and understanding of events in the past, historical interpretation, historical enquiry and organisation and communication to become powerful and skilled individuals. Children will have an understanding of their place within the world, how things have changed and why and they will learn lessons from history to influence the decisions that they make in the future.