History
How do we teach History at Albrighton Primary School?
Intent
At Albrighton Primary School and Nursery, we believe that a broad and rich curriculum is essential in the education of all pupils. As a result, history has a significant role to play in both our schemes of work and beyond. We intend to provide children with a sense of belonging and an understanding of the complexities that lie and have laid within the past, present and future world.
Pupils are not only taught the key knowledge required, but they are also given lots of opportunities to question, enquire and challenge so that they can develop their own perspectives. At Albrighton, we believe in strong community spirit and strong community links and as such use our fantastic locality to enhance the history curriculum; planning for visitors, trips and outdoor learning opportunities where possible. We are currently developing our own heritage project, which we hope will give children an understanding and sense of pride and respect of where they are from.
Implementation
Our long term overview ensures that the children meet all the National Curriculum objectives, revisiting concepts to secure understanding, and over a range of time periods to support chronological understanding. The children learn through a concept-based curriculum, allowing them to learn beyond solely the topic facts. Concepts or ‘big ideas’ allow children to make connections between their learning and in turn gain a deeper understanding. Concepts are returned to throughout the year groups to ensure children have a clear understanding of them and enabling them to be held within their long-term memory. Teachers follow a knowledge progression overview to plan their lessons using a range of agreed sources and resources.
Impact
Children will have a love of history and a holistic understanding of the past via the guidance set in the National Curriculum.
We measure the impact of our history curriculum through the following methods:
- formative in class assessments to check individual lesson understanding e.g. thumbs up, knowledge ‘dump’ (writing all learned so far), mini quizzes
- giving opportunities to show history knowledge through writing e.g. reports, newspaper articles, historical narratives and fact files
- creating posters
- class debates
- pre and post topic quizzes
Adaptive Teaching
Adaptive teaching means that teachers adapt their teaching to make it appropriate for all students in their classroom so each and every child can access the learning and be successful in their learning. For history this means that all children will receive Quality First history teaching in the classroom and the lesson and resources will be adapted to suit the needs of all pupils. This might take the form of: reducing expectations for writing history at length; using different styles of teaching e.g. drama; breaking up lessons into smaller chunks; rephrasing questions; using movement to remember key terminology; using resources such as word banks; and targeted support from the teacher and teaching assistant.
Please find a copy of the history subject policy below.
| Name | |
|---|---|
| History Subject Policy .docx | Download |
Years 1 and 2
Years 1 and 2 have been learning all about Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth and more recently, The Great Fire of London. This has been used to inspire some writing too.
Year 3 and 4
Year 3 and 4 are currently learning about Ancient Greeks as part of their topic 'Gods and Mortals'. They are exploring the enquiry question 'what is the lasting legacy of the Ancient Greeks?' This included literacy work where they wrote non-chronological reports about Greek gods.
Years 5 and 6
Year 5 and 6 have looked at the space race. When looking at Black History month, they completed a biography on Katherine Johnson to demonstrate their knowledge.
What can parents do at home to support the learning of history?
Challenge your children to tell you things about what they have learned at school. Can they remember what their enquiry question for the term is? Find what this should be on the curriculum map (within the file list at the bottom of the page). How well can they answer the enquiry question? What could they research in order to answer this question better?
Learning resources
- BBC Bitesize
- Early years guidance for parents
- Crickweb
- Horrible Histories on iPlayer
Online games
- Ancient Greeks: The Argo Odyssey (KS2, BBC Bitesize)
- Back in time: Astonishing Activists (KS1, BBC Bitesize)
- Back in time: Exciting Explorers (KS1, BBC Bitesize)
- Primary games arena (all ages)
- Quizzes
Local places of interest you could visit
- Royal Air Force museum, Cosford.
- Boscobel House
- Lilleshall Abbey
- Ironbridge
- Coalport China Museum
- Blists Hill Victorian Town
Books to read
Other useful documents:
