Intent

At Tansley Primary School we believe that high-quality history lessons inspire children to want to know more about the past and to think and act as historians. By linking learning to a range of topics, children have opportunities to investigate and interpret the past, understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s past as well as that of the wider world, and to be able to communicate historically. We develop children with the following essential characteristics to help them become historians:

 An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past;

 The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences;

 The ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources;

 The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry;

 A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning;

 A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics;

 A developing sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.

Implementation

The skills and knowledge that children will develop throughout each History topic are mapped throughout the school to ensure progression. We achieve this by giving children:

 A knowledge organiser which outlines knowledge (including vocabulary) all children must master for each topic;

 A cycle of lessons for each subject, which carefully plans for progression and depth;

 Challenge questions and debates for pupils to apply their learning in a philosophical/open manner;

 Trips and visiting experts who will enhance the learning experience.

Impact

Our History Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

 A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes;

 A celebration of learning for each term which demonstrates progression across the school byway of homework-sharing days and parent activity mornings;

 Pupil discussions about their learning