Intent:

At St Paul’s Church of England Academy, we are committed to providing children with high-quality, diverse History lessons as we believe these inspire children to ask questions and fuels their desire to know more about Britain’s past and the wider world. We understand that engaging History lessons will ignite pupils’ curiosity, allowing them to act like historians and develop a solid understanding of past events and how this can impact them as an individual now and in their future lives, allowing them to make their own informed choices as they progress through their lives. By linking learning to a range of topics, children are provided with opportunities to investigate and interpret, understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s past and how this connects us to the world as a whole and to be able to communicate their thoughts historically.

Our academy is fortunate to be in a location surrounded by rich history and St Paul’s ensures that we provide our pupils with purposeful, first-hand experiences to explore our localities history so that our historians can see the real-life impact of History in their own locality and start to make meaningful links to the present day. Pupils will be taught to make links between areas of learning within their current year group and previous, with the aim of developing engaged, motivated and curious learners who can reflect on the past, develop an understanding of the process of change and recognise how this has affected others in our society.

Our History curriculum has been designed to cover all of the skills, knowledge and understanding as set out in the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum states that ‘a high-quality History curriculum will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupil’s curiosity to know more about the past'. 

We develop our pupils 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;
• An ability to critically think about History and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences;
• The ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views respectfully whilst using historical evidence from a wide 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 have the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning; recognising that History has many view points;
• A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake research across a range of History topics;
• A life-long sense of curiosity about the past and the current world around them; questioning why people interpret the past in different ways.

Implementation:

Learning will start by revisiting prior knowledge at the beginning of each lesson where children will be asked questions based on their previous lessons learning; their previous history topic as well as a question from the previous year. This will be scaffolded appropriately by staff to support the children to recall previous knowledge and make connections in topics taught in previous year groups. Staff will model explicitly the subject-specific vocabulary, knowledge and skills relevant to the learning to allow them to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts by highlighting this to the children on their knowledge organisers. Knowledge organisers will further provide children with the opportunity to embed the knowledge for each topic such as key dates and facts. The knowledge organisers also allow teachers to assess the children at the beginning and the end of a topic to see whether the children have retained knowledge taught.

Teachers will follow the Plan Bee units of work, each year they will deliver their History topics in chronological order. History will be taught in Terms 2, 4 and 6. Teachers will embellish the scheme of work with their own knowledge and experience.

The History curriculum will further be enriched, with trips and first hand experiences, to ignite their passion for History.

Our historians will be provided with a variety of experiences both inside and outside of the classroom where appropriate to create memorable learning opportunities and to develop a life-long love of History, which will support them in further success in their future academic lives as they progress to secondary school and beyond.

Impact:

At St Pauls, pupil voice shows that our historians are confident and able to talk about what they have learnt in their History lessons using subject specific vocabulary. Pupil voice also demonstrates that our historians enjoy History and are able to recall their learning over time. Pupils work demonstrates that History is taught an age appropriate standard across each year group with adaptations being made where necessary. Work is of good quality and demonstrates pupils are acquiring knowledge, skills and vocabulary in an appropriate sequence. With the introduction of more diverse themes throughout a range of our history topics, pupils will feel a sense of belonging within their History curriculum.