Brightwell cum Sotwell CofE Primary School

History at Brightwell

"We are Historians"

Curriculum Intent

At Brightwell School, we believe a high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past.

Our teaching aims to equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and the relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

Within History lessons, our aim is that children understand their context within the world today by having a sound chronological understanding of major events and periods in world, national and local history. The children subsequently gain an understanding of how these historic events have helped to shape modern Britain and the world.

Learners are inspired and curious to learn how people lived and what decisions were made in the past, and develop empathy in order to understand why historical figures made these decisions as well questioning whether they think this was the correct decision to make. Our values are embedded so that children show respect when understanding the complexity of people’s lives in the past, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups.

Within our school, we also aim to improve children's historical knowledge and understanding through hands-on experiences related to their area of learning in History, which bring to life the children's learning within the classroom and engage them with the curriculum. History forms the basis for many of our termly topics or themes at Brightwell School, which also flow into our text-rich English curriculum with links to topic texts.

Curriculum Implementation

At Brightwell, historical topics are blocked to allow children to focus on developing their knowledge and skills, studying each topic in depth, however cross-curricular links are planned for, with other subjects such as Maths, Writing and Computing.

We have developed a progression of skills across key stages, which enable pupils to build on and develop their skills each year and medium-term planning for all units covers key historical concepts: Chronological understanding, Historical knowledge, Historical interpretation, historical enquiry and organisation and communication. To support teaching, staff access a range of resources and planning.

In Key Stage 1, History begins by looking at the children’s own personal history and introduces them to the idea of chronology and timelines. Pupils look at significant events and people who have shaped society: locally, nationally and globally. In Key Stage 2, each year group studies a British history topic and an ancient or non-European history topic. UK history is taught chronologically to allow children to confidently place each time period. This allows pupils to consistently build on previous knowledge and learning by placing previously taught History topics on a timeline.

In order to support children in their ability to know more and remember more, there are regular opportunities to review the learning that has taken place in previous topics as well as in previous lessons. Children are given opportunities, where possible, to study artefacts leading to enquiry, investigation, analysis, interpretation, evaluation and presentation. We also plan for effective use of educational visits and visitors, to enrich and enhance the pupil’s learning experience and the History curriculum.

Curriculum Impact

Through the quality first teaching of History taking place, and through the on-gong assessment opportunities throughout individual History units, we will see the impact of the subject in different ways so that by the time the children leave Brightwell School, they should have developed:

A secure knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from the historical periods covered.
The ability to think critically about history and communicate confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.
The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, forming and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgements.
A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.

Subject leader monitoring acts as an evidence base for the impact of the sequence in place to establish the level at which pupils know more and remember more.