History
At Earlsfield, we believe History should motivate and inspire pupils to learn about the world they live in and how it has changed over time. Our History curriculum focuses on acquiring facts and knowledge as well as developing historical and geographical skills.
We teach children about the wider global concepts, linking to the goals for sustainable development, such as ‘Life on Land’ and ‘Quality Education’.
History is taught through our Topic lessons. A main enquiry question drives each topic at Earlsfield, with pre-planned sub-questions to shape our teaching and learning. The pupils are active participants in offering suggestions for learning and a pupil voice activity stimulates discussion at the start of each topic and allows children the opportunity to say what they would like to find out about their new topic. Topics are then generated with the children’s interests in mind to provide an engaging and pupil-lead learning experience.
How is History taught?
The 2014 National Curriculum for History aims to ensure all pupils:
Through history, children gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world.
Teaching equips pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.
History Progression EYFS to Yr6
Our topics enable 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.
- know and understand the history of Britain as a chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day, including 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 and the characteristic features of past non-European societies
- develop and apply 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, fask relevant questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives
- understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why
Many different periods of History are explored across Key Stages 1 and 2, from discovering how the dinosaurs lived billions of years ago and learning about the impact of the Roman Army on Britain, through to studying life during World War 2 and finding out how violent the Vikings really were! As part of our enquiry approach we use a range of resources and techniques such as artefacts, photographs, websites, video clips, first-hand accounts and source work, to explore specific periods of History.