History
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in history, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school and focuses on the knowledge and skills outlined in the National Curriculum.
At James Brindley Community Primary school, we ensure that history has the same importance given to it as ‘core’ subjects as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences. Having a good working understanding of Chronology, they will be able to see how topics studied link to others and how they fit into the History of Britain and the wider world. As well as gaining the ability to both ask and answer questions, pupils will use a wide range of sources effectively to build on prior knowledge as they move through the school. Our high-quality curriculum allows us to link learning to a range of engaging topics, providing children with the opportunity to investigate the past in an exciting and purposeful manner. Pupils develop their own interpretations, building up evidence and knowledge as they go, along with the ability to communicate in a historically appropriate manner. Our history curriculum 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. Teaching supports pupil progress by embedding frameworks of content and concepts that enable pupils to access future material. Abstract concepts are best learned through meaningful examples and repeated encounters in different contexts.
Our curriculum design, teaching, and assessment prioritise the knowledge that pupils need, to understand and learn new material. The two forms of knowledge that are developed in our History curriculum are:
Substantive Knowledge – pupils’ knowledge about the past
Disciplinary Knowledge – pupils’ knowledge about how historians investigate the past, and how they construct historical claims, arguments, and accounts