History

What are the aims of teaching history?
The National Curriculum for England describes the purpose of history as:

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. Teaching should equip 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.

The National Curriculum for history aims to ensure that 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.

History at Bramley St Peter’s

At Bramley St Peter's we offer a history curriculum that gives children a chronological and coherent understanding of Britain’s past and present, and that of the wider world. 

In Early Years we provide opportunities to expand the children’s knowledge and understanding of events, people and changes in their own lives. This will then be broadened to events from the past of people familiar to them. 

During Key Stage 1 pupils find out about significant people and events from the recent and more distant past, including those from both Britain and the wider world. Children develop an understanding of the past and begin to develop chronological awareness.

Key Stage 2 pupils further develop their knowledge of chronology, deepen and widen their understanding of the past and broaden their historical enquiry skills.

We want to equip our children with the skills of interpretation and enquiry that will enable them to have a good consolidation of their historical knowledge, leading to them being able to draw comparisons and make connections between time periods and their own lives.

Wherever possible, our history curriculum is enhanced by trips and visitors, as these bring the past alive for our children.

We recognise the importance of embedding historical knowledge within children’s long term memory and we use a range of approaches to achieve this, such as the use of knowledge organisers and quizzes.

Cross curricular links are identified and drawn upon to enhance historical understanding further. For example many of our class texts are linked to our history topics and allow children the opportunity to delve into the lives of characters with a historical context.