Wimborne First School & Nursery

History Curriculum

Intent

“History does not give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.”

– Robert Penn Warren

At Wimborne First School and Nursery, we have designed our History curriculum with the intent that it will inspire the children in our school to become inquisitive, curious and questioning learners. We want our children to gain a deep understanding of how the past has impacted our lives today and how it has shaped society as a whole. We aim to cultivate and grow our children’s knowledge of the lives of people who lived in the past.

Our curriculum aims to reinforce the key learning behaviours of our Wimborne Learning Rangers and will inspire the children to study patterns, make comparisons and most crucially, ask and answer their own questions about a variety of concepts, people and events of the past. Our curriculum will teach the children key skills that are transferable across many subjects of the curriculum and aim to ensure that these will continue with them throughout their academic lives. This is achieved through the delivery of thought-provoking lessons, that ignite the children’s curiosity and a range of opportunities to visit places of historical significance in our local area to develop their understanding and passion for the subject.

Implementation

History across the school in is taught in ‘unit’ blocks throughout the year. Each unit is taught for a half term. This is to enable the children to achieve depth in their learning and build a solid foundation of knowledge and understanding of overarching processes as well as key concepts. All learning begins with a ‘flashback’ to establish prior knowledge. This will provide opportunities for the children to improve their recall and continue to build connections in their learning. Teachers understand that this is key to ensure children build the vital concept of a mental timeline.

The progression of the curriculum ensures that children gain both substantive and disciplinary knowledge and that there is a progression of skills that build clearly through each year group. We have identified ‘key concepts’ that draw on links with other subjects across the curriculum to help children make links between content. This enables the children to acquire ‘sticky knowledge’ that they are able to build on and deepen throughout their school career.  Within each unit teachers will model key vocabulary, knowledge and skills relevant to the learning and extra opportunities are given to scaffold the learners during pre-teach and catch-up sessions that take place weekly across the school. This will enable the children to make links and connect these ideas to the larger concepts in a wider sense.

Please see progression information:

Please see our Learning Journeys 

Impact

Assessment in History aims to gather evidence of the children’s substantive and disciplinary knowledge. This is done through a range of assessment activities that take place at the end of each unit such as a quiz, a written question or a comparison activity. These are all designed to enable the children to have the opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge, skills and understanding that they have gained over the course of their unit of learning.  Teachers also use AFL throughout each unit to ensure that key knowledge is building and to also highlight any misconceptions that can be addressed either at the time or during our weekly catch-up sessions. Retrieval practise is also built into many lessons and given at the start of each new unit. The aim of this is to ensure that children’s knowledge of our key concepts and a solid understanding of chronology is continually building.