History Curriculum

History at Plymouth Grove Primary School

Our History Leader is Miss Driscoll

Article 29 of the UNCRC: a child or young person's education should help their mind, body and talents be the best they can

Global Goal 4: Quality Education

Intent

At Plymouth Grove Primary School we deliver a broad and balanced History Curriculum. We aim to provide children the opportunity to develop, build and master their skills, knowledge and understanding of Britain and the wider World. They will show knowledge of previous learning and build and develop new skills and knowledge to show progression to the end of year Key Stage expectations. We will enable children to make links to their own lives and other curriculum subjects providing opportunity for oral discussions.

We aim to build this knowledge and understanding and key skills through the age related expectations of the 3 key strands of History:

. Chronological Understanding – time and events

. Contextual Knowledge and Conceptual Understanding – understanding people’s lives, changes that have happened and how they compare to our lives.

. Historical Enquiry and Investigation – research events, ask questions, look at views and arguments and develop own ideas.

Implementation

The History Curriculum is taught by topics that each year group teach. Each year group in Key Stage 1 focuses on:

• Changes within Living Memory

• Local Area

• Significant Individuals

Within Key Stage 2 they focus on:

• British History

• World History

• Local History

Teachers within year groups plan the topics together and share planning enabling them to share ideas, strengths and resources. The plans and objectives follow our schools Age Related Expectations (ARE) for History enabling progression and consistency throughout the school. The planning and resources are kept on the computer system and each year group has the ability to also look at other year groups planning and ARE’s to make sure progression, coverage and learning is being taught. This also enables teachers to share planning and resources within the school.

Each year group has started to produce KIC’s (Knowledge, Ideas, Concepts and Skills)  organisers for their topics in History and these are given out before the topic begins. This enables the children to think about what they already know what they want to find out and start to begin their own learning. This also helps children to focus on specific questions relating to the topic and coverage within each year group.

All resources are online or within classrooms and teachers are able to share these to enrich the learning of History throughout the school. Where we can, we also include trips that link with topics furthering the children’s excitement and enthusiasm about the History Curriculum. 

Within each year group KICS are produced and used as an assessment tool to see what the children have learned at the end of a topic. We also use low stake quizzing, answering questions raised by the children, oral conversations and discussions and History assessments based on each topic which are informed by each year groups AREs and coverage. The outcomes of these assessment tools are then used to inform assessment of History at the end of the academic year. 

Impact

Fischer Family Trust curriculum tracker is used to record the progress the progress that pupils are making in terms of knowing more, remembering more and being able to do more  at the end of each academic year. This will record whether the children are working towards the age related expectations, at the age related expectations or exceeding the age related expectations. 

These judgements will be quality assured by subject leaders using first-hand evidence of how pupils are doing, drawing together evidence from pupil interviews, observations of tasks, reading tasks, work scrutinies and  discussions with pupils about what they remembered about the content they have studied.

These judgements will inform the curriculum and whether children are ready for the next stage of their education.

The skills, knowledge and understanding learned within the History Curriculum can develop children’s skills, knowledge and understanding within other areas of the Curriculum such as Science, Mathematics, English, Geography, Design and Technology, Art and Computing.