History

History is the study of people in the past and how their actions have influenced our lives today. It can help children to make sense of the world in which they live and can help them to develop a sense of identity.

Intent

At Beaconsfield Primary School we shape our history curriculum to ensure it is fully inclusive of every child. We provide a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum that encompasses the British Values throughout. Our history curriculum is rigorously sequenced so that our children’s historical knowledge, understanding and skills build over time. It is taught as a separate subject and alternates with Geography each term e.g. Autumn 1 – History topic, Autumn 2 – Geography topic.

The aim of our History curriculum is to create inquisitive and enthusiastic historians who demonstrate the following essential characteristics:

• An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes.
• The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
• The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.
• The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
• A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
• A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgments.
• A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.

Implementation

Within our classrooms, we follow rich and ambitious lines of enquiry by answering enquiry questions such as ‘Vikings: Explorers, Raiders or Traders?’ or ‘How did World War II impact on British life?’ We teach children the knowledge they need in small steps to answer these challenging questions successfully. Studying history in this way inspires children’s curiosity, encourages them to ask critical questions and enables them to have a better understanding of the society in which they live and that of the wider world.

In our history curriculum, we have thought about key threads that run through the units of learning.  These include invasion and settlement, legacy, empire, migration, civilisation, monarchy and society. By carefully mapping these themes across the units and revisiting them in different sequences of learning, we ensure children make links and gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts.

Threshold concepts are the ‘big ideas’ that underpin each area of the History curriculum. Children return to these concepts in a wide breadth of topics, gradually deepening their understanding of each one over time. Knowledge categories are the aspect of knowledge which makes up each threshold concept.

Our Curriculum

Year 1 History Curriculum – click here

Year 2 History Curriculum – click here

Year 3 History Curriculum – click here

Year 4 History Curriculum – click here

Year 5 History Curriculum – click here

Year 6 History Curriculum – click here

Enrichment Opportunities

We offer a range of different enrichment activities and events in order to ensure we are equipping our children with the essential historical knowledge and cultural capital to succeed in life.

Some examples of enrichment opportunities which take place:

KS1 – A local area history tour, a visit to Brighton to investigate Seaside Holidays

Lower KS2 – Visits to the Museum of London and the British Museum

Upper KS2 – Day trip to Ypres in Belgium (World War I), The Battle of Britain Bunker, The National Archives