Intent
Children attending Gainsborough Primary School often have very few experiences of developing their understanding of the wider world, due to being located in an area of high deprivation, meaning that families are not able to visit places that develop a historical awareness of the world and high mobility rates. The history curriculum at Gainsborough makes full use of resources within the immediate and wider local area enabling children to develop a deep understanding of the rich history of their locality and celebrate the rich history of the local area.
The history curriculum is delivered to ensure that it is accessible to the diverse socio economic, cultural and neurodiverse backgrounds of the children at Gainsborough, whilst enabling children to reach their full potential in understanding the complexity of other people’s lives and the process of change; the diversity of societies and relationships between distinct groups; as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time through the teaching of history. It provides opportunities for discovery and challenge and for pupils to work collaboratively in their learning. The curriculum is planned so that it is in line with the national curriculum.
The history curriculum is planned with clear substantive knowledge (knowledge of the past) and disciplinary knowledge (how historians find out about the past and shape their arguments) which enables children to enquire, research and analyse in history, know more and remember more and build on their knowledge as they progress through the school. Alongside the pedagogical approaches of a review, teach, practice and apply lesson structure to delivering the knowledge, children are able to know more and remember more. This approach ensures that children are able to keep up, with opportunities to catch up delivered at the start of the lesson if needed.
The history curriculum ensures that by the time the children leave in Year 6, they will have:
● Built a coherent, chronological narrative of the British Isles, from the earliest times to the present day. They will have learned how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world (The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, The Iron Age, Roman Britain, The Anglo Saxons, The Vikings, The Great Fire of London, The Victorians, WW2, Windrush and Crime & Punishment).
● Explored and understood 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 (Ancient Egyptians, Early Islamic Civilisation, The Ancient Greeks, Roman Britain, Explorers, The First Flight and WW2).
● Developed their 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.
● Explored the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discerned how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed.
● Gained a 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.
Vocabulary development is a key aspect of our whole school curriculum as a result of the high proportion of children who start Gainsborough Primary School with lower levels of vocabulary than is typical for their age.
Vocabulary is taught explicitly to support the development of understanding the abstract concepts and to build a schemata to attach new learning to. Whilst developing an understanding of chronology, children in EYFS learn today, yesterday, tomorrow, present, now, then, past, day, week, month and year. In KS1 this is developed further: timeline, date order, chronological order, era, period. KS2 deepens the understanding of chronology with vocabulary such as: B.C.E (Before the Common Era), C.E (The Common Era), B.C (Before Christ), A.D (Anno Domini) and millennium.
The history curriculum starts when the children begin their learning journey in the Early Years. Therefore we allow children to explore historical themes and content through the ‘Understanding of the World’ strand of the EYFS curriculum. Children are taught when they were born; events they have celebrated throughout the year; how the past is different from today; how families at home can look different to their own; how to talk about things they have learned from that day; how lives today are different from the past and how information can be retrieved from books and computers.
Implementation
History is taught in blocks throughout the year, so that children achieve depth in their learning. Teachers are given the substantive and disciplinary knowledge for each topic and consideration is given to ensure progression across topics throughout each year group across the school. Teachers plan lessons using the medium term plans created by the subject leader. These clearly show the substantive knowledge (content), substantive concepts and disciplinary concepts. Progression in history has been carefully mapped across the curriculum. Learning is revised frequently to ensure that teachers are clear about what has been remembered and children are then able to build upon the knowledge previously learned.
Our substantive concepts are: social justice, hierarchy & power, conflict, architecture & civilisation.
Our disciplinary concepts are: time, change, chronology, reasons and results, interpretations, historical evidence & significance.
A substantive concept map shows which year groups and topics have covered our different substantive concepts so teachers can use this document to explicitly teach the range of concepts by building upon prior learning and enable the children to make links between different topics within the history curriculum.
Children are supported in developing their chronological understanding of periods of time by using timelines that are displayed in the classroom. This enables children to put new learning into perspective of what they have learned already.
We teach history in a variety of ways as outlined below:
● Where possible we use a range of visual stimuli such as artefacts, videos and photographs for children to explore and investigate. We believe that handling real objects enhances the children’s historical knowledge, resourcefulness, understanding and skills.
● We aim for children to recognise that bias exists in some form in all historical sources, and this needs to be accounted for in their interpretation of evidence. This is done through looking at information with a world view.
● Use of ‘quick quizzes’ and mind maps to ensure children are revisiting prior learning to enable them to build a schema of knowledge therefore enabling them to know more and remember more.
● We recognise that children learn in a variety of ways, and so where appropriate, children will learn history outside the classroom, with visits to historical sites and museums. For example, visits to The Royal Courts of Justice in Year 4 when studying Crime and Punishment or visiting the Normandy Beaches in France when learning about the D-Day landings.
We believe that all learners should primarily access first quality teaching and be immersed in class discussions during lessons. Therefore, SEND learners access the same learning as all other children but will be given further support, adapted outcomes and a tailored approach to suit each individual’s needs. Strategies used to support our SEND learners include:
● A pre-teach of topic specific vocabulary
● Reading support when researching using a range of sources
● Printouts of work/presentations to scaffold with independent tasks
● Instructions broken down into manageable chunks and more time given to process the information
Children with high levels of need have a broad curriculum offer, linking into National Curriculum themes, but with scaffolded learning which meets their needs, ensuring they are also making good progress from their initial starting points. The themes are planned to ensure that skills and knowledge to be embedded and built upon.
We understand that children have missed opportunities of learning because of the COVID outbreak and the resulting distance and blended learning models that were used in the previous school years. Our current teaching model ensures that any missed opportunities are addressed before teaching new concepts and topics. This pre teaching approach ensures that children are able to access the new learning and build upon their knowledge and skills.
Impact
Outcomes in history evidence the acquisition of identified key knowledge that children have sequentially learned year on year so that all children, apart from those with high level SEND needs who are on personal journeys, meet the national expectation.
End outcomes ensure that children have the opportunity to apply the different components that have been taught to a composite piece of learning. Teachers regularly use low stakes quizzes to ensure that the knowledge has been retained.
As children progress throughout the school, they develop a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world.
The impact of our history curriculum at Gainsborough ensures that children are equipped with historical skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready to continue their learning journey in KS3 and for life as an adult in the wider world.