History
Subject Overview
What do we want our children to learn in History?
Please click to view our Progression of Knowledge and Skills in History. This shows what we want our children to learn in History at Norristhorpe.
Our Local History
Our local area is full of interesting history. We are situated in the Spen Valley which is famous for textiles. Our Year Two children explore the local area to find out about local heroes such as Joseph Priestley and Algernon Firth. Our Year Three children learn all about significant local buildings and the Luddites! In Year 6, the children consider how the World Wars affected our local area. Here are a few photographs of us exploring the local area to find out about the past!
Intent
Our history curriculum at Norristhorpe intends to equip pupils with a deeper, more relevant, sense of their place in the world, and how it relates to the experiences of others. Through careful sequencing of historical knowledge and skills, pupils feel equipped to critically engage and evaluate the historical world around them, making discernible observations on historical actions and interpretations.
From the Stone Age period to life inside of collective memory, pupils gain key component knowledge to support a secure foundation of history.
Implementation
At Norristhorpe, History is taught across KS1 and KS2 for at least 1 hour a week, in alternative half terms. Our curriculum for History develops the core historical knowledge identified in the national curriculum, alongside developing rigorous methods of historical enquiry. We use an adapted version of the Rising Stars scheme of work, developed to need of our community and our young people. Using a variety of different teaching methods, pupils enhance their historical understanding of the world, applying previous and newly acquired skills to strengthen their conceptual and chronologic associations. Units have key questions to develop the use of historical enquiry, as well as a focus on the acquisition and application of key subject knowledge, concepts and vocabulary throughout.
Through guided discussion, opportunities for collaboration and written contributions, pupils engage critically with key historical enquiries, discerning how and why evidence can support or challenge different historical interpretations and how some questions can have more than one linear answer. Lesson activities support pupils’ development of key historical terms to compare and contrast events, people and periods.
Appropriate discussion is used as a means of checking pupils’ historical learning systematically, identifying misconceptions and providing immediate feedback. Revisiting ideas and concepts in different, more challenging, contexts in later units, using varied assessment tasks and the inclusion of quizzes are all designed to help pupils remember content and integrate new knowledge into their evolving conceptual framework. Visual literacy is developed through the use and careful questioning of resources.
History in Norristhorpe builds on the Early Learning Goals acquired in Reception and prepares the pupils for the Key Stage 3 programmes of study.
Impact
The impact of history is evidence of pupils’ critical engagement of historical sources and concepts. Pupils will be able to use historical vocabulary, including more abstract terminology, and knowledge to explain an historical enquiry or support and challenge an historical interpretation, with greater clarity as the continue their learning sequence. Pupils’ work and discussions will demonstrate comparative approaches to other areas of study. It is evidenced by the use and outcomes of the varied activities, assessments and quizzes given throughout school. As they progress, pupils will speak with increasing confidence about their historical learning.