History

Intent

Our aim for the children of Brindle St James' is to offer them a rich historical curriculum which reflects on past events and provides opportunities for children to look at what has changed over time. Our curriculum has been reviewed to make sure that our curriculum is inclusive, covering a range of races and provides a broad range of sources to avoid the stereotyping of societies and groups from the past. As a school, we wish for a our pupils to build upon prior learning and our curriculum map is arranged in a way that means the same themes (contexts) are revisited and built upon during each key stage. Each class has a history treasure trove which has items in from previous history topics, which are used as a stimulus to revisit prior learning, especially in key stage 2. We wish for all of our children to become historians, giving them the skills to ask questions, reflect on change and look at the quality of historical sources of information. 

We aim to use many sources, including the Lancashire Archives, local people, Brindle Historical Society and provide trips to significant historical sites. 

Implementation

At Brindle St James’ CE Primary School we follow the National Curriculum Programme of Study for History. History teaching focuses on enabling children to think as historians. We place an emphasis on examining historical artefacts and primary sources, and when possible, give children the opportunity to visit sites of historical significance. We encourage visitors to come into the school and talk about their experiences of events in the past. We recognise and value the importance of stories in history teaching, and we regard this as an important way of stimulating interest in the past. We focus on helping children understand that historical events can be interpreted in different ways, and that they should always ask searching questions (e.g. ‘How do we know?’) about information they are given.

Our long term plan detail a disciplinary concept and a substantive concept for each unit. This is to focus the teachers planning and give depth of understanding through lessons. Disciplinary concepts are progressive throughout school with 3 being taught in KS1, lower KS2 and upper KS2. We have chosen these specifically for our school and they are:

• Civilisations
• Race, migration and equality
• The history of the local area/ chronology

Impact

Our children achieve well in history with the majority reaching our end of year goals. Children enjoy history lessons and can talk at length about the topics they have learnt about. Key for us, is that they can also reflect on these past events and explain what they have learnt and how these events have shaped the views of others. 

The Subject Coordinator for History is Mrs T Austin