CATHCART STREET PRIMARY SCHOOL
HISTORY VISION
At Cathcart Street Primary School our vision is that our teaching of History will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We aim for it to inspire pupils’ curiosity about the past and to know more about the past. We aim to enable children to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.
Intent
At Cathcart Street, our intent is to deliver a high-quality historical education which will help children gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We seek to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past, ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. We aim to help pupils 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. We use a range of resources from the Historical Association, Historical Resources from Wirral Library Service as well as making good and effective use of the wide range of historical enrichment opportunities around us.
Our plans are designed by the school, to develop children’s understanding of their local area history as well as national and international history. It also supports the aims of the National Curriculum so that all pupils:
- know and understand the history of these the British Isles
- know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world
- gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of specific historical terminology
- understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance
- understand the methods of historical enquiry
- gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts
(National Curriculum, 2014)
Implementation
History takes place every other half term, as shown on the long-term plan. All learning will start by revisiting key knowledge. This will be scaffolded to support children to recall previous learning and make connections.
Staff will model, explicitly, the subject-specific vocabulary, knowledge and skills relevant to the learning to allow them to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts. Learning will be supported through the use of knowledge organisers that provide children with scaffolding that supports them to retain new facts and vocabulary in their long-term memory. Knowledge organisers are used for pre-teaching, to support home learning and also as a part of lesson review.
Consistent working walls in every classroom provide constant scaffolding for children. Tier three subject specific vocabulary is displayed on the working wall along with key facts and a record of the learning that has taken place, for children to refer to. Weekly key knowledge quizzes are used to review learning and check that children know more and remember more.
Learning is reviewed also on a termly basis, after a period of forgetting, so that teachers can check whether information has been retained, this is comes in the form of a Key Knowledge End of Unit Quiz. History assessment is ongoing through assessment the work produced, considering whether the children have the knowledge embedded and can use the historical facts as and when needed to suit their purpose. Summative assessment is completed at the end of each topic, where history objectives and skills have been covered. A skills tracker is used to inform teachers and the History Leader of school improvements or skills that need to be further enhanced. Our historians are be given a variety of experiences both in and out of the classroom where appropriate to create memorable learning opportunities and to further support and develop their understanding.
In Early Years Foundation Stage, we relate the historical aspects of children’s work to the Birth to 5 Matters programme and the Early Learning Goals.
Impact
By implementing the intent, children at Cathcart Street should:
- know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
- know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind
- gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
- understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
- understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed History – key stages 1 and 2
- gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales