History

The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.

Theodore Roosevelt Former American President, statesman, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer.

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History Lead:

Mrs Roscoe

Follow the Twitter hashtag #STMHistory to see historians in action throughout St Michael’s, from Nursery to Year 6.

History at St Michael's through our Explore Curriculum

History: Intent

At St. Michaels we provide high quality History teaching through our Explore Curriculum. Underpinned by the National Curriculum, our History curriculum holds our children and their aspirations, environment and development at its heart.

Our curriculum allows our children to build a secure understanding of the past through exploring British history, as well as embracing our multicultural St. Michael’s school community, whilst learning about the history of the wider world. Our History curriculum promotes curiosity and a love and thirst for learning. It is ambitious and empowers our children from EYFS to Year 6 as they explore and develop a rich knowledge of the past. By the time our children reach the end of their primary journey we endeavour for them to have the ability to communicate effectively using a broad and varied historical vocabulary obtained from both explicit teaching, spaced retrieval practice and exposure to high quality texts.

Our progressive curriculum addresses and constantly explores and revisits the key Substantive knowledge (the historical facts and the concepts of History such as invasion, monarchy, tax and empire) through carefully organised manageable chunks designed to build schema and support children’s cognitive load. Through high quality teaching, children are exposed to the Disciplinary knowledge (how historians study the past) within the History curriculum such as ‘Thinking like a Historian’ and accepting that History is an evolving subject, open to debate and challenge as we work towards understanding our world better. All of this rich Historical knowledge is taught through meaningful and authentic examples and is practiced in our regular retrieval activities to ensure that our children know more and remember more.

 

 

 

The main aim of our History curriculum is to:

Develop a higher level of Historical vocabulary used by our children from EYFS to Y6. This development of vocabulary should be well sequenced to ensure progression and challenge as the children progress through the school.

Teach vocabulary explicitly throughout every History lesson using our whole school techniques such as ‘My turn, your turn’, using a variety of voices for repetition and the ‘Word Aware rap’ where appropriate.

Use high quality texts to supplement our History curriculum where appropriate, providing opportunities for children to see History content in books they enjoy and to support our School Improvement priority of improving reading across the school.

Through an ambitious curriculum, develop children’s chronological knowledge of Britain’s past and that of the wider world and develop knowledge of how the past has had an influence on present life.

To ensure that the coherent, chronological and rigorous structure of our curriculum prepares our children for the new historical knowledge that they will learn because of the rich knowledge that they have already secured. The building up of a mental timeline provides opportunities for our children to connect what they have learned.

Develop children’s understanding of historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity and difference and significance.

Develop children’s knowledge of how historians study the past and construct their accounts through meaningful examples.

To implement the ‘Opening Worlds Humanities’ programme across the KS2. During this period of implementation, aspects that are effective will be rolled out and adopted by other year groups to ensure consistency in the teaching of History.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opening Worlds Humanities Curriculum

We are currently in the process of implementing the Opening Worlds Humanities Programme in partnership with School Improvement Liverpool. This humanities programme is currently followed by Years 3 and 4  extending this for Upper KS2 over the next two-year period. This programme is focused around scope, rigour, coherence and sequencing of the History curriculum. This programme is broad in scope, exposing our children to a vast variety of historical periods and stories to feed their curiosity.  This programme is coherently sequenced, building pupils ability to compare and contrast, forming their own opinions and critical judgements of Historical ideas and concepts. This is taught through high leverage activities which encourage pupils to think hard about the information presented to them and begin to develop a broader, deeper understanding of the world around them. This programme has been well received by both our learners and the teachers delivering the sessions thus far and will be utilised further across KS2 as our children progress through the year groups.

The Great Fire of London

The children in Year 2 became intrepid reporters and interviewed significant individuals about the Great Fire of London!

Investigating Evidence

Egyptian History

Useful Links: History

Resources: History

Just click a button below to View any document, you will then have the option to Download or Print the file. You can access all of our policies and reports on the website. Please contact the school if you would like any paper versions of our documents.

Whole School History Overview

2022-2023

History Reading Spine

2022-2023

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History Policy

March 2023

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