History

History Curriculum Intent

Our History Curriculum aims to enhance our pupils’ historical knowledge and conceptual understanding of developments and changes over time, relating this to the significance and impact of history on the modern world in which we live.

The historical journey begins in EYFS where it is mainly taught through the area of learning: Understanding the World and communication and language. This is where the children will begin to understand and speak confidently about the passing of time from past to present looking at their own personal lives and that of their families. The key skills mentioned below will be built through talk, real experiences, role play and handling artefacts. This will give the children the foundations of historical concepts and skills to build on through the following 2 key stages.

We focus on the development of four Key Skills: Historical Chronology, Historical Concepts, Working Historically and Communicating Historically. Within these, pupils are taught to construct and sequence the past, understand and articulate concepts such as cause and effect, plan and conduct historical enquiries and use appropriate historical terminology.

Our Topics provide a broad and culturally diverse experience for pupils and key themes within topics are revisited sequentially so that pupils can connect their learning, build upon prior knowledge and commit learning into long term memory. Our Key themes are: Location, Main Events, Conflict, Society, Travel and Exploration, Settlement, Culture and Pastimes, Beliefs and Food and Farming.

These themes are visited through the contexts of our History Topics, which can be found in our curriculum planning below. 

At the end of a topic, pupils answer an assessment question, which gives pupils an opportunity to present their understanding of what they have learnt. Teachers assess the depth of understanding through these answers and use this to inform assessment.

Alongside our historically themed topics, we also run a ‘local history week’ – each class focuses on a different theme of local history within our local area. They become detectives, investigating the past, making comparisons from then to now…. How has Denton changed?

You can follow our History learning by searching on Twitter @Linden_History or check out our Learning Showcase!