History at Trewidland

Intent:

At Trewidland School, we believe that high-quality history lessons inspire children to want to know more about the past, to think as historians and to recognise the way history has shaped our lives today. Our lessons, ensure pupils understand Britain’s past and the wider world. We aim to inspire children to investigate and interpret the past giving them opportunities to do this. The history curriculum at Trewidland, uses the local area which enables children to develop a deeper understanding of local history as well as the wider world. Our topics are informed by the National Curriculum, children’s interests and our local area. By linking learning to a range of topics, children have opportunities to investigate, communicate and interpret the past, understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s past as well as that of the wider world.

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

• An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, cultures, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in World and British history.
• The ability to think critically about history 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:

History is taught in units throughout the year on a half-termly basis, so children can achieve depth in their learning. We follow the National Curriculum and as part of the teaching and learning process:

• History is taught in units throughout the year on a half-termly basis, so that children can achieve depth in their learning.
• History untis are based around a question where learning builds through the unit to answer the question at the end of their learning. 
• Teachers have identified the key knowledge and vocabulary for each unit and these are taught using knowledge organisers across the school.
• Teaching is adapted to meet the needs of children with SEND.
• Teaching is adapted to support the skills within our mixed age classes. 
• Lessons develop the children’s understanding of historical concepts: significance, continuity and change, cause and effect, perspective.  This spiralling around the concepts helps to build their understanding and helps them to structure the information so their memory also improves.
• All History lessons follow the National Curriculum and are linked to the topic being taught, allowing the children to build curiosity, ask questions and investigate answers in a variety of ways.
• Each unit allows children to access a range of historical sources, both primary and secondary. This can include, but is not limited to: historical artefacts, books, videos.
• Timelines are effectively used throughout the school and ensure children can build upon their prior knowledge.
• The teaching of History is enhanced where possible by educational visits, visitors to school, museum loans and links with local, national and international organisations.
• Where possible, History lessons make links to other subjects such as English, History, Science and Maths.
• SECRET Skills are interwoven with History lessons to support our character education philosophy.
• 'Flashback Fours' are used each lesson to help children recall their previous learning from both recent lessons and previous years. 

History long term overview 

Long term overview 

Teachers use the below progression of skills to support planning and teaching for the individual needs within mixed age classes. 

Progression of history skills at Trewidland Primary

We use history timelines to help children their chronological understanding. These timelines link our long term overview. 

Key Stage 1

Key Stage 2

Impact:

By the end of Key Stage 2, every pupil at Trewidland Primary School has experienced learning about Cornish Heritage, Britain’s past and the world around us. Well planned and taught lessons lead to children who develop good conceptual understanding of history. Our spiral curriculum, combined with the use of knowledge organisers and timelines, in conjunction with the SECRET skills, ensures children can think like a historian and develop a solid schema for their future education.  Timelines have a powerful impact ensuring children can see the bigger picture of history and retain and build upon this knowledge over the years, also supporting their education into Secondary School and beyond.