History
Subject Lead: Mr White
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At St. Joseph’s, we are committed to ensuring the curriculum is purposeful, progressive and empowering for every child. We value all of our children and celebrate diversity of experience, need, interest, and achievement. Our curriculum provokes curiosity and excitement for all children at St. Joseph’s. We recognise that we are building the foundations for life-long learning with Christ at the centre. A shared love of literature throughout school and our faith life and Gospel values, Trust Character Virtues and British Values, sits alongside our curriculum drivers. Our curriculum drivers are what makes our curriculum unique to us here at St. Joseph’s. They are woven through all that we do and underpin our shared belief that our role is to support and help our children to understand their place within their local town, their country and in their world as a global citizen; to have experiences that become part of their life story; and aspire to achieve their very best, having been shown that there is a world of possibility awaiting them, outside of the school gates.
Intent
Our History curriculum is designed to develop a sense of curiosity and ignite a passion about the past.
At St. Joseph’s we intend for children to:
- understand people, events, concepts and processes from a range of historical periods
- develop the skill to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past
- understand how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
Implementation
At St. Joseph’s Academy we follow the National Curriculum for History, this is taught through relevant and age-appropriate topics.
Our curriculum is carefully planned to allow pupils to explore their own locality through local history topics e.g. the life of Captain James Cook. Wherever possible cross curricular links are exploited, see our curriculum overview. We encourage school visits and visitors into school to enable the children to gain first-hand experiences to enrich their learning and cultural capital.
Our curriculum is designed using the theory of interleaving to ensure that concepts are systematically revisited; current learning is linked to previous learning to allow children to build a strong historical schema within their long-term memories.
These concepts are:
- investigate and interpret the past – recognising that our understanding of the past comes from an interpretation of the available evidence
- build an overview of world history – appreciation of the characteristic features of the past and that these features are similar and different across time periods and for different sections of society
- understand chronology – understanding of how to chart the passing of time and how some aspects of history happened at similar times in different places
- communicate historically – historical vocabulary and techniques to convey information about the past
Each lesson begins with a retrieval task, this is a 10 minute activity which is linked to something taught earlier that term, that year group or phase. A 'retrieval revisit' is timetabled each week in KS2 to consolidate learning and inform future retrieval planning.
For each topic children are provided with a 'Learn it! Link it!' booklet which details facts about the topic, prior learning connected to the topic and a vocabulary bank.
Progress is measured through an assessment task.
Impact
Pupils will:
- have an in-depth, long-lasting knowledge of historical people and periods
- be able to think, reflect upon and debate about the past
- have experienced a wide breadth of study and cultural capital
- be able to think like historians, ready for KS3.