History

Purpose of study

At Crawford Village Primary 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 equips 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 relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

Aims

The national curriculum history aims to ensure all pupils:

• 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.
• 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.

At Crawford Village, we are members of the Historical Association to support our whole school history provision.  Access to some of the high quality resources and more information can be found on their website though the link here.

National Curriculum History Programmes of Study

History Vision Statement

At Crawford Village, our vision is that the teaching of history gives pupils an understanding of the past through learning about human achievements and experiences. We aim to give our children a history curriculum which enables them to become confident, creative and independent learners. We seek to broaden children's real-life experiences both inside and outside of school through educational visits, visitors, experimentation, exploration and discovery. We believe that within history lessons, our children acquire a range of knowledge and skills, which they can then apply to other subjects and in a variety of situations.

Intent

At Crawford Village, we aim for our children to develop a curiosity and fascination to find out more about our local past and that of Britain and the wider world. We strive to ensure all children have a fundamental understanding of key periods in history and to learn to ask appropriate questions about why things happened and the impact of those events. Children will learn about ancient civilisations and empires, changes in living memory and beyond living memory, learn about the lives of significant people and events in the past. We want our children to enjoy and love learning about history by gaining knowledge and skills through ‘WOW’ moments and opportunities, objects and artefacts, experiences in the classroom and educational visits.

Implementation

Our history curriculum is taught in blocks over a range of different topics throughout the year on a 3-year rolling cycle; this allows children to both study a breadth of topics and develop depth in their learning, expanding on existing knowledge and skills as they progress through the curriculum cycle. Teachers are aware of the key knowledge, skills and concepts (both substantive and disciplinary) of each topic and careful consideration has been given so that children get opportunities to review learning from past topics to ensure they consistently build on previous knowledge and make links between concepts.

Impact

Through the teaching of history, children will:

• Understand the importance of history through different opportunities and become enthusiastic history learners, evidenced by their work and pupil voice.
• Have some knowledge of historical development in Crawford and the wider world and be able to recall their learning over time.
• Learn to think critically, ask perceptive questions and evaluate evidence like a historian.
• Learn lessons from history to influence the decisions they make in their lives in the future

Children's Websites

Click on some of the icons below to take you to some useful websites to help learn more about the past.

The BBC website (though no longer being updated) has loads of links to videos, games and information a range of historical periods.  Click here.

Files to Download