Intent for History

Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds, Healthy Futures.

In History, we encourage children to explore and question events and people from the past. By approaching History with a focus on investigation and interpretation children are able to identify and empathise with their past, building an understanding that allows them to reflect on life in modern Britain.

We develop children with the following essential characteristics to help them become historians:

§ An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past;

§ The ability to think critically about people and events and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences;

§ The ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources;

§ The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry;

§ A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning;

§ A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of History topics;

§ A developing sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.

Implementation for History

We do the following in order to deliver our curriculum in History:

• We do not follow a set scheme of work, instead choosing to draw from a range of resources to create series of lessons that are tailor made for the children.

• Teachers are provided with medium term plans with skill progression built in.  These plans also consider key vocabulary and quality assessment. As part of this planning process, teachers need to include the following:

  • A knowledge circle to record ideas and possible enquiry questions.
  • A vocabulary starter for each lesson with at least one recorded in books for each topic.
  • Each cycle of lessons will include a focus on chronology and an opportunity to conduct a historical enquiry.
  • An extended writing task to allow children to communicate understanding and explore a topic. Examples are then added to a whole school display.
  • Trips and visiting experts who will enhance the learning experience;
• Frequency - History is taught in a half termly rotation with Geography.
• History is linked and made relevant to a range of other curriculum areas throughout the school, with all classes exploring chronology, key features and characteristics of a range of time periods outside of set History lessons.
• Each History unit is ended with an assessment task that allows all children to display understanding of historical skill set despite writing ability.  These assessment decisions are then moderated both internally as well as at local authority moderation meetings.

Impact of History

At Norman Pannell we provide high quality assessment tasks that allow all children to demonstrate their historical skills and understanding. At the beginning of every topic children are encouraged to self-assess their starting point and consider what they know. Throughout their topic, children will be provided with opportunities to prove their knowledge and skills in written, spoken and practical tasks .  Subject and school leaders monitor the impact of our curriculum provision through completing regular monitoring, including pupil voice.  Class teachers also take part in cross-moderation with local schools.