Intent 

At Honilands Primary School, we aim to encourage students to develop historical awareness and understanding by accessing a variety of primary and secondary sources and study materials. Our historians will also be able to explain how these sources provide us with information on how people lived in different parts of the world in the past, as well as how these views differ. Pupils will be taught to connect these areas of learning to build engaged, motivated, and curious learners who can reflect on the past while making meaningful connections to the present. 

History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives and the main concepts of History. This gives pupils an understanding of empathy and identity, or in other words, their place in the world: 1. Change and Continuity, 2. Sources of Information,  3. Causation, 4. Legacy or impact on our world today, 5. Similarity and difference. 

A high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. All throughout the study of the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity  and the challenges of their time (National Curriculum 2013).

Implementation

At Honilands, we follow the National Curriculum framework for the teaching of History, and children learn through focusing on the key historical concepts of:

• Understanding chronology
• Interpreting history through sources and artefacts
• Similarity, Difference and Significance
• Continuity and Change
• Cause and Consequence

We use the Opening Worlds Curriculum to guide our planning because it focuses on developing both substantive and disciplinary knowledge in equal measure. The curriculum is ambitious in its scope (meeting and exceeding the demands of the National Curriculum), meticulous in rigour (responsive to up-date scholarship in History), highly coherent (intricate links have been built within and across subjects so that nothing sits in isolation) and carefully sequenced (so that pupils’ ability to build a comparison and reach a critical judgement).

Teaching and Learning 

• The school’s curriculum maps show the units to be covered each term, which, over each Key stage, will include: understanding chronology; interpreting history through sources and artefacts; similarities, differences and significance; continuity and change, cause and consequence.
• There is a unit plan for each unit of work
• Plans are adapted to ensure that all pupils, regardless of attainment, can access the content.
• PowerPoints/planning are annotated and adapted to support children with SEND, lower-attaining children, and those new to English, thereby enhancing access to the content. 
• All children have the opportunity to deepen their knowledge and skills within lessons through well-planned questions that make links between learning. 
• Flexible groupings are used during lessons e.g. ability and mixed ability groups, paired work, guided and independent work and whole-class work.
• Opportunities to develop core literacy skills are exploited through historical research and reporting as well as the learning of new vocabulary. 
• Relevant vocabulary is explicitly taught, evident in the classroom and used in discussion and reasoning.
• A range of resources (primary and secondary) is used to enhance learning, including handling objects, pictures, historical documents, watching videos and reading information texts. These include: matching vocabulary words; filling in the gap; completing the sentence; true or false  sentences; information files; map interpreting and  sketching; using sentence starters to accommodate and  express opinions; and reading, affirming, questioning and debating are among the most common activities we tend  to use in our history teaching and learning
• Individual pupil books are used to record pupils' learning in History.

During Foundation Stage 

‘Understanding the World’ involves  guiding children to make sense of  their physical world and their community through opportunities to  explore, observe and find out about  people, places, technology and the  environment in which they live.  

‘People and Communities’ involves children discussing past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of family members. They know about similarities and differences between themselves and others, and among families, communities, and traditions.

During Key Stage 1

Pupils will learn to identify similarities and differences between life today and in the past, and to use common and keyword terms associated with the passage of time. They will study the lives and lifestyles of familiar people in the recent past and learn about famous people and events in the more distant past, including those from British history. Pupils will talk and write about events that happened and why people acted as they did. Pupils will learn about the past using various sources of information and representations. Towards the end of the key stage, pupils begin our chronologically mapped curriculum, starting with the Stone Age and Neolithic periods before moving on to the beginning of written history and the study of Ancient Civilisations in KS2.

During Key Stage 2 

Our KS2 curriculum is carefully mapped so that knowledge develops chronologically up to Y5. Pupils in lower KS2 will learn about people and ways of life from ancient times and civilisations. They will develop a sense of the ancient world and of achievements across the globe, making comparisons where relevant. In upper KS2, students will learn about different aspects of British and local history and discuss how and why events occurred or changed, and the legacies we see in contemporary life. In Y6, at  Honilands, we take the opportunity to focus extensively on British history from ancient times, when Romanisation began and what it meant on a journey that continues with the arrival of medieval and modern times to the present day. 

Across the Key Stage, pupils will learn to appreciate the contributions that different societies have made to the world. This is linked to their  own identities and that of our diverse  community. They will learn to conduct historical enquiries using a variety of sources of information and examine how and why the past is interpreted in different ways. Pupils will develop and deepen their understanding of chronology and of important concepts that impact on our world today, such as settlements, civilisation, rulers, trade, slavery, empires, political systems, and social organisations, as they progress through the key stage.

Impact

How do we assess History?

At Honilands, we employ a range of formative and summative assessment techniques to evaluate pupils' progress and attainment. Pupils’ participation in class, evidence in books, quizzes and teachers' observations are all used to support assessment, including:

• Oral feedback is to be used to improve pupils' work throughout each lesson.
• Children may use a purple pen to signify responses to feedback.‘Edit and Review’ to check spelling errors and other secretarial errors at the end of each lesson.
• Assessment for Learning is used within each lesson to establish next steps for pupils. 
• Low-stakes quizzes are used regularly to check pupil knowledge and retention.
• Short recaps of prior knowledge/ learning are used in each lesson to ensure the children have secure knowledge and understanding.
• End-of-unit assessments are used to summatively assess children’s learning and identify gaps and misconceptions to inform future planning.
• In EYFS, teachers and key workers make observations regarding the pupils’ development and use Tracking Grids to identify pupils’ attainment.