History
At Kenilworth Primary School, we make sure that the past comes alive through our history curriculum. Lessons will transport pupils back in time to explore different civilizations, events and influential figures that have shaped our world. We believe in the power of history to inspire curiosity, empathy and critical thinking. Our history focuses on a curriculum that builds knowledge of key concepts and chronological understanding through engaging, enquiry-based lessons. Our history ensures children are actively analysing sources and historical evidence from a range of primary and secondary material to form their own conclusions on the past. This will incorporate diverse historical periods, places and societies and they will regularly revisit core knowledge to embed it in long-term memory. Our students develop appreciation for the complexities of human history and the lessons it holds for the future.
Intent
At Kenilworth Primary School, our intent is to provide a high-quality broad and balanced history curriculum which stimulates pupils' curiosity about the past. Children will foster curiosity and critical thinking, helping them to develop a complex, chronological understanding of local, national and world history. It aims to build skills in analysing evidence, asking questions and making connections over time while appreciating how societies have changed. The curriculum is designed to help students understand how historians construct accounts of the past. Pupils will be equipped to not only meet the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum for history but to prepare them for the opportunities and experiences of Key Stage 3 and beyond.
Implementation
Our history curriculum is underpinned by the aims of the National Curriculum and benefits from a spiral curriculum to ensure knowledge and skills are revisited. At Kenilworth, we want the children to behave as historians and use skills that they would use.
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 History - key stages 1 and 2
- 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.
Impact
Within history lessons, each unit has a unit quiz and knowledge catcher, which can be used at the start or end of the unit to assess children's understanding. Opportunities for children to present their findings using their historical skills will also form part of the assessment process in each unit. Pupils will leave school equipped with a range of skills and knowledge to enable them to study history with confidence at Key Stage 3. We hope to shape children into historians of the future.
Kenilworth also uses a variety of other assessment tools to check children's short-term and long-term understanding. Within history lessons, teachers use exit cards to ensure that children have a firm understanding before leaving lessons, they use quizzes at the end of a topic which focus on recent learning as well as learning in previous units/year groups to assess whether learning has been 'sticky' and they use various other tools to check students' understanding.