"History has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own." 

Michelle Obama

Intent

At Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Primary School, we strive to create a love and interest for history and to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. We aim to help our children to gain the knowledge, skills and understanding to become life-long historians. We want to instil a thirst for knowledge about the past and understand how events have shaped the world we live in today.

Our curriculum is based on three themes: Pride in our Place, Aspire and Achieve and Ignite Possibilities. Through these themes, we educate our children to take pride in our local history, to explore historical achievements and to learn from history to help us to make a difference for the future. Our history curriculum helps pupils gain a coherent, chronological knowledge and understanding of the past and enables them to use core knowledge of dates, events, and people to talk confidently about a range of historical periods in Britain and the wider world.

We follow the National Curriculum for Primary History beginning with EYFS, Knowledge and Understanding of the World. A history progression map from Y1-Y6 builds upon prior knowledge in a carefully sequenced curriculum and makes links to other subject areas where possible. Our history curriculum has bespoke substantive concepts which is threaded throughout: settlements and invasion, raw materials, tools, technology and trade, culture and beliefs, government and society.  

Implementation

Our history curriculum is taught using the Great Teaching Toolkit, 2020. We endeavour to be consistent in our approach to create a supportive environment that is inclusive. We support all our pupils using adaptive teaching techniques, Voice 21 talk tactics and oracy sentence stems. We activate hard thinking through our thinking schools strategies and Q Matrix questioning to bring history to life and develop a real sense of enquiry. At Our Lady Star of the Sea, we have a consistent recipe for teaching history which follows Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction.

Impact

The impact of our history curriculum is measured through a variety of different strategies. Ongoing teacher assessment is used throughout lessons to inform teaching. Retrieval practice is used throughout each lesson to address gaps in pupils’ knowledge before moving on. This is done through using cumulative quiz questions in each unit that builds through the sequence of learning. Children also use vocabulary front covers to continually look back and reflect on previous learning, allowing them to remember more core vocabulary from the lessons.

Children’s learning is monitored by regular book scrutiny by the History Subject Leader in which constructive feedback is given to staff for future planning.  History is also monitored through learning walks and pupil voice.

All of this is used to inform further curriculum developments and provision. 

At Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Primary School, staff work closely together as a team to ensure children receive the best history curriculum to allow them to develop a love of learning and skill set to become keen historians.