History

For St Philip’s School Children, the History Curriculum should inspire children’s love of learning of the past, both in their local area, Great Britain and around the world.

This Curriculum will also strive to enrich their vocabulary and speech and language skills; to include abstract historical terms, allowing them to consolidate their learning and develop the ability to express their understanding, including their own historically based opinions.

Therefore, History at St Philip’s should teach key concept skills such as chronology, posing historically valid questions and analysing trends in the past, which affect our lives today and have shaped our nation.  This Curriculum should allow children to compare their lives and experiences with people from the past.  It should give them the ability to understand how Historians and Archaeologists discover information about the past and how such information should be presented to a wider audience.  They should also be given the skills to evaluate how and why events change over time from the beginnings of prehistory to the present day.

For our SEND children, practical history learning provides the opportunity for success, through different mediums. Sequencing stories, handling artefacts, finding evidence and discussing similarities and differences are skills which can provide all with an avenue to achievement.

Debate is key to the types of historians we want to see graduate at the end of their time at St Philip’s – historians who can use their skills of enquiry, judgement and communication to reach an informed point of view and put across their opinion with convincing evidence. Were the Vikings really as vicious as the Anglo-Saxons believed? These open questions drive our learning.

This knowledge, as well as the understanding and skills to apply it, is built up in small progressive steps year by year and in the six main strands we have agreed:

• Chronology
• Key Features
• Cause and Consequence
• Interpretation
• Enquiry
• Communication

The aim is to continually build on what they have learned before as they move gradually from history topics that are very personally real and relevant, such as a history of toys to more abstract history and increasingly complex or multi-layered issues. You can see this progression in our Subject Overview below, and in the topic planning for each year group.

Our curriculum intent for History

Our intentions for the History curriculum are:

• For children to gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world.
• To provide opportunities that stimulate children’s curiosity to know more about the past.
• For children to appreciate history in a chronological context.
• For children to be encouraged to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.
• To begin to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.
• To develop the use of historical language, and enrich their vocabulary to support their understanding of the world in the past.

Children in the Foundation Stage are taught the historical elements of the Foundation Stage document through the Early Years Curriculum: Understanding the World.

Our implementation of the History curriculum

At St Philip’s Catholic Primary, teachers bring the history curriculum to life and engage children through a range of exciting topics and a variety of stimuli, including key texts, studies of famous historians, historical artefacts and events, theatre workshops and school trips. As a staff, we maintain strong links to the National Curriculum and incorporate an enquiry-based approach to children’s learning about key historical events and people.

We develop our Medium Term Plans drawing on historical themes in the termly topics, making links with other subjects wherever possible, including: art, science, RE, English and Geography. Links are made to termly themes and other curriculum subjects where appropriate, and these are identified on a termly Learning Journey and individual Medium Term Plans. Long-term plans identify individual historical units taught across the year group phases. A planned progression of skills built into the history curriculum, means that the children are increasingly challenged as they move through the school.

Children’s work is celebrated through high quality displays and assemblies. The local area is also fully utilised to achieve the desired outcomes.

The impact of this learning will be: 

Skills used for enquiry based approach

History Progression of Skills KS1 2021

History Progression of Skills KS2 2021

Primary National Curriculum – Key Stage 1 and 2 – History PDF