In This Section
History
At Bracken Leas Primary School, we aim to deliver a high-quality enquiry-based History curriculum which will motivate and inspire pupils with a curiosity and fascination about Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We encourage children to see the world through the eyes of young historians; finding out about the past themselves as historical detectives, piecing clues together. We want to enable young learners to understand how events in the past have contributed to the shaping of the world we live in today and that gaining an awareness can contribute to building a more informed and sustainable society in the future.
We explore History in depth rather than attempting a fully comprehensive coverage at the expense of subject vigour and the development of core concepts and skills. Building a curriculum based on subject outcomes rather than just content. This is a process which builds on the excellent start made in EYFS and which treats the children as active learners rather than passive vessels to be filled with knowledge. In our approach we will pose key questions and enable children to go on a learning journey to answer the question. Important subject knowledge is implicit in each enquiry but is balanced with adequate time and opportunity for pupils to master key subject skills and outcomes by ‘doing less better’. This ensures progression in both the complexities of content and in terms of pupils applying knowledge to achieve higher order outcomes as they move through the curriculum. In this approach we accept that we don’t know what happened in the past because we weren’t there; we have to discover this for ourselves as historians. They will learn how historians investigate the past and construct claims, arguments and accounts by being in role as the historian.
History is about real people who lived, and real events which happened in the past. History is concerned with sequence, time and chronology and is the study of evidence about the past; it gives us a sense of identity, set within our social, political, cultural, and economic relationships. History fires the children’s curiosity about the past in Britain and the wider world and plays an essential part in preparing us for living and working in the contemporary world. Pupils consider how the past influences the present, what past societies were like, how these societies organised their politics, and what beliefs and cultures influenced people’s actions. As they do this, children develop a chronological framework for their knowledge of significant events and people. They see the diversity of human experience and understand more about themselves as individuals and members of society. What they learn can influence their decisions about personal choices, attitudes, and values. In History, children find evidence, weigh it up and reach their own conclusions. To do this they need to be able to research, sift through evidence, and debate their point of view – skills that are prized in adult life.
Each enquiry will use a key question as a starting point which will be introduced through key evidence, artefacts, role play, images, accounts and even ‘red herrings’. This will then develop into ancillary questions and content focus in each lesson. At Key Stage One many of these questions will be more tightly defined ‘Who’, ‘What’,’ Where’and ‘When’ questions but at Key Stage Two more open-ended with an emphasis on ‘Why’ and ‘How’. Appropriate and specialised historical vocabulary will be introduced and consolidated at each stage and to this end each enquiry will include a comprehensive list of key subject vocabulary which will develop as each investigation unfolds.
The children will interpret and analyse evidence to enable them to evaluate, draw conclusions and communicate their findings and will ultimately answer the key question. Through this process the children will be encouraged to generate further questions to investigate. It will identify potential misconceptions and take measures to address them. It will also introduce pupils to different interpretations of the past and contradictions and the idea that not everyone views an event in the same way.
