History
Intent
To support our whole school curriculum intent in History, we aim to stimulate the children’s curiosity and understanding about the life of people who lived in the past in Britain and the Wider world, whilst developing the children’s chronological knowledge and their ability to identify continuity and change over periods of time. It is important for the children to understand that history is constructed by people who study the past and this is based on research and evidence. The findings of which are open to interpretation and may change according to the evidence used and who is interpreting it. Through the History curriculum, we aim to help children understand society and their place within it, so that they develop a sense of their cultural heritage.
At Charles Saer Community Primary School, children are encouraged to develop and use Historical skills i.e. enquiry, investigation, analysis, evaluation and presentation, as well as giving reasons as to why people in the past behaved in the way they did and their effect on present day society(legacy). Children are encouraged to think for themselves, work independently and display self confidence. We ensure that Historical skills and knowledge are built on and developed throughout children’s time at school so that they can apply their knowledge of History when examining artefacts and resources, asking and answering questions, finding evidence, building arguments and explaining their reasons confidently. History fosters tolerance of other people’s opinions and the understanding that others may interpret evidence of the past in a different way.
We want our children to have a broad vocabulary and we work hard to narrow the vocabulary gap. Historic language is taught, revisited and built upon as they progress through school. In every classroom, history specific words are introduced and displayed, linked to their current History topic. By the end of the topic, children are able to give a definition of the word and use it in the correct context. To develop the children’s language skills, teachers model sentences and historical phrases, in order to help the children construct their own arguments.
The staff at Charles Saer Community Primary School ensure that all children are exposed to high quality teaching and learning experiences. History teaching focuses on enabling children to think as historians. Whenever possible we provide children with first hand experiences and place an emphasis on examining historical artefacts, photographs and primary sources.
We believe that first hand experiences are crucial in developing the whole child and throughout their time at school, we give children the opportunity to visit sites of historical significance and Museums. We encourage visitors to come into the school and talk about their experiences of events in the past. In each phase, we include a local History study to help the children to connect with their own heritage and develop a sense of pride in self, school and community. These experiences are purposeful and link with the knowledge being taught in class..
Our History curriculum enables children to develop their skills of co-operation, resilience and commitment through working with others, and to encourage where possible, ways for children to explore History in forms which are relevant and meaningful to them.
We recognise and value the importance of stories in history teaching and we regard this as an important way of stimulating interest in the past. We teach with a creative approach to ensure this occurs.
Implementation
At Charles Saer Community Primary School, we have developed a cross curricular approach to our curriculum using selected and adapted lessons from ‘Curriculum Maestro’ units over a two-year cycle.
Through this, History is taught either as a cross-curricular link or as a focus topic, following the National Curriculum (2014) programmes of study.
Our progression in skills have been mapped out and can be found using the links below:
Impact
We assess children’s work in history by making informal judgements as we observe them during each history lesson. Each lesson starts with a question and time is left at the end of the lesson for children to respond to it orally or in writing. Assessment techniques in History may include: observations of pupils work/questioning, pupils discussions or oral presentations of their work, pupils written, pictorial or graphical work and structured worksheets. On completion of a piece of work, the teacher marks the work and comments as necessary. 
At the end of a unit of work, the teacher makes a summary judgement about the work of each pupil( if they have yet to obtain, met or exceeded the unit objectives ). We use this as a basis for assessing the progress of the child at the end of the year, based on their understanding and application of the content of the National Curriculum (2014). Progress and attainment is reported to parents through parents evenings and end of year report. Records of the children’s progress are passed onto the next teacher and any skills that need more reinforcement are identified. These records help to inform future learning.
The history subject leader keeps samples of children’s work in a portfolio. These demonstrate what the expected level of achievement is in history for each age group in the school.
