History

Tibshelf Infant and Nursery School – History

Subject Statement

The delivery of the History Curriculum in Tibshelf Infant and Nursery School is designed to inspire our children’s curiosity, encourage a love of learning and equip them with both an understanding of simple chronology and an awareness of events that have happened in the past.

Intent

At Tibshelf Infant and Nursery School our curriculum will follow the intended aims of:

The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework for Understanding the World

• Talk about the lives of people around them and their roles in society. 
• Know some similarities and differences between things in the past and now, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class. 
• Understand the past through settings, characters and events encountered in books read in class and storytelling.

The Primary National Curriculum for History.

Our curriculum will focus on the four main units where children will

• Changes within living memory – initially begin to understand their own family history and start to notice differences and similarities between life today and the past.
• Events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally.
• The lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements, some should be used to compare aspects of life in different periods.
• Significant historical events, people and places in their own locality.

It will allow children to build upon their prior understanding and skills as they progress through the school. They will move on to learning about change that has occurred within living memory in different stages (their own memory, their parents’, their grandparents’) and then progress to investigating changes beyond living memory and significant historical events. Children will learn through different methods with the introduction of artefacts and visitors into school, bringing history alive and therefore meaning more than simple facts and dates.

Through our History curriculum, children will learn about develop an appreciation of our local community, British heritage and the wider world. We will support children to be confident in their own identity, develop their respect for diversity and become knowledgeable about the world around them. This respect and awareness is intended to promote their cultural capital experiences in preparing our children to become actively informed citizens of their future world.

Implementation

EYFS

In the EYFS children will explore history through a mixture of direct teaching opportunities in whole or small groups and high quality planned continuous provision with intended learning opportunities around the classroom. It is taught through the Understanding the World area of learning, with specific links to the Early Learning Goals.

Key Stage 1

As pupils move into Key Stage 1, History is taught via the topic based Blocked Curriculum which link learning together in three termly blocks.  First hand experiences are used wherever possible, such as the use of historical artefacts, or re-creating experiences from history and through story telling. Key vocabulary is introduced and, where applicable, revisited as each new topic is investigated. This vocabulary is included in displays, resources and children’s work to ensure them sufficient opportunities to revisit and embed this knowledge.

Delivery

High Quality Teaching will enable us to:

•  Inspire children’s curiosity and foster a genuine interest to know more about the past.
•  Help children to understand their own identity in relation to others.
•  Allow children develop an understanding of chronology and how it can be represented in different ways.
•  Prepare children to understand the process of change and how the events of the past and other people’s lives have impacted on their own lives today.
•  Help children to compare different periods of time.
•  Encourage children to know and understand how to find out more about the past and consider different methods of research.
•  Equip children to ask perceptive questions, think critically, consider evidence and its validity and develop their own judgement.
•  Develop children’s historical knowledge and vocabulary.

Assessment

At Tibshelf Infant and Nursery School, Reception children will be assessed the Foundation Stage profile, and in Key Stage 1, children will be assessed against the agreed key knowledges statements specific to each block of learning. This key knowledge is retrieved at regular intervals through flashback opportunities as well as being displayed on working walls for the children to access. Children in Early Years will have class floorbooks showcasing the intended learning that has taken place. In Key Stage 1, children have a learning journal. As part of our assessments, our history subject leader will conduct pupil voice sessions with these learning journals to explore retention of key knowledge.

Impact

We will know our curriculum is successful because children will:

• be inspired to become curious historians
• discover more about history
• develop the knowledge, and the range of everyday historical vocabulary needed to help them explore and understand events and people
• gain a sense of ‘past’
• be able to ask and answer questions
• be aware that historical events have happened in chronological order, be able to order events and discuss where these fit in relation to their own lives.
• be able to make comparisons between ways of life in different periods, identifying both similarities and differences.

These skills will be able children to be ready for the next stage of their education as they move onto Key Stage 2 at Townend Junior School.