History
Intent
At Christ Church, all pupils will build a solid foundation of skills, knowledge and understanding which will inspire them to succeed as they reach for their star in life. It is our aim to instill a love and curiosity of History in all our pupils. We will provide a broad and balanced curriculum in which knowledge and skills are built upon progressively and revisited across sequences of lessons, year groups and key stages. Our History curriculum shows strong cross curricular links with the texts used in English and links with other curriculum areas to ensure vocabulary and themes are embedded as well as contributing to their personal development.
Pupils will leave our school:
• curious to know more about the past and how it has impacted on the present, future and their own lives.
• successful in using a historical enquiry approach to explore, analyse and interpret a range of sources and evidence from the past;
• equipped with a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history;
• having gained first-hand experience of local History through enriching fieldwork and engaging visits, which is especially important due to the context of our pupil base;
• fluent in everyday historical vocabulary; able to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, reason and make judgements about the past;
• clear understanding of society and their place within it, so that they develop a sense of their cultural heritage and a responsibility for the future.
Implementation
As they progress through school, all pupils will:
• experience a broad and balanced curriculum which helps them to develop their chronological understanding of events and knowledge and understanding of British, local and World History. Planning will clearly show the ‘golden nuggets’ of knowledge, skills and concepts, that we want the pupils to learn in History in each year group, each half term;
• experience enriching, memorable fieldwork and engaging visits, making full use of the immediate and wider local area, enabling children to develop a deep understanding of the History of their locality;
• develop a strong historical enquiry approach providing opportunities to ask probing questions, make insightful predictions and to find their own answers;
• use a range of sources and artefacts to enhance their understanding of the past, and encourage them to weigh up evidence and make judgements. Interactive displays and a wide range of resources and books in the classroom environment throughout topics will enhance pupils’ learning;
• be given regular opportunities to make links between Historical learning and the wider curriculum – including the spiritual and religious learning – to explore how History has and does relate to other aspects of life and experience;
• develop their explanation and reasoning skills so pupils gain a grounded understanding of Historical vocabulary and concepts. New vocabulary will be displayed on display boards and in books and show pupils’ growing understanding. Teachers will model and display sentence stems to help develop pupils’ vocabulary, reasoning and explanation skills in History, which is particularly important for our diverse community and high percentage of pupils with English as an additional language.
Impact
• Pupils will enjoy History lessons and look forward to finding out more about the past and how it has shaped the world we live in today.
• All pupils, regardless of their background, will leave school with the disciplinary skills and curiosity to continue their Historical learning throughout their lives.
• All pupils, regardless of their background, will have the best opportunity to reach age-related expectations. Standards in History will be high and match standards in other subjects.
• Pupils with will have a secure substantive knowledge of British, local and World History.
• Pupils will be able to successfully ask questions, analyse evidence, reason and make judgements.
• Pupils will understand how events in the past have impacted their own and others’ lives, learning lessons from the past to help them to share God’s message of ‘love for all’.
• Pupils will learn to value their own and other people’s cultures in modern multicultural Britain and, by considering how people lived in the past, they are better able to make their own life choices today.
• Pupils respect and can appreciate how religion and History each have an important place within our understanding of the world and our lives.
• Pupils will be able to communicate and reason with confidence, explaining, justifying and drawing conclusions.