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History Intent

The history curriculum at Newton aims to give a solid foundation and broad overview of some of the most important periods in local, British and world history. We aim for it to inspire pupils’ curiosity about the past to develop their understanding of key events. Children will ask questions, think critically, weigh evidence and develop perspective and judgement. Through the teaching of History, we endeavour to teach pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, including those of the present, the process of change, the diversity of societies and beliefs, whilst celebrating these differences.

We teach our pupils to ‘think like a historian’ by examining artefacts and sources from the time and encouraging them to think critically about what we might be able to learn from the evidence. Woven through our planning is a recognition of diversity - we teach the pupils that people from all backgrounds, ethnicities and religions have had an impact on the world and we hope that children see themselves in our curriculum.

History Implementation

How are History lessons delivered?

History (or Geography) is taught each week and cross-curricular links made to other subjects where appropriate. Our history curriculum begins in the EYFS with Understanding the world. The pupils develop their understanding of ‘past’ and ‘present’ through learning about themselves, building up their personal experiences, understanding the diverse world and widening their vocabulary through inspiring activities. Building on this, in Year 1 our curriculum takes the children on a thematic journey to build up their knowledge of continuity and change. In Year 2, children study significant events and people. From From Years 3 - 6 children are taken on a chronological journey, including a local study of Roman Chester.

History is taught as part of a half-termly or termly topic, focusing on substantive knowledge (facts) and disciplinary knowledge (skills). In addition to substantive and disciplinary knowledge, children will develop their experiential knowledge through museum visits and handling artefacts. Timelines are displayed in each classroom in order to make sense of chronology within a topic and place the topic in its wider sequence, helping children to develop their ‘mental timelines’.

How do pupils make progress in history?

Pupils at Newton make progress by increasing:

• their knowledge about the past (‘substantive knowledge or facts)
• their knowledge about how historians investigate the past, and how they construct historical claims, arguments and accounts (‘disciplinary knowledge or skills)

History Impact

We measure the impact of our curriculum by giving pupils the opportunity to explain their reasoning and metacognition of a topic as well as their accumulation of knowledge. This may be done through practical exercises, group tasks, quizzes or discussion. We value developing Historical oracy and place great emphasis on children being able to explain how, where and why; understanding the study and application of Historical skills will serve our pupils well in their future studies across the wider curriculum.