History

Subject Lead - Mr G.Whitworth

At Priory Lane Community School, we are all historians!

The study of history allows children to understand the struggles, achievements and lessons learnt by our predecessors throughout time. Our children will gain an understanding of significant individual’s lives and how they have changed and influenced history. They will also study the diversity of societies and the relationships between different periods of time.

The national curriculum puts a clear importance on three areas of learning within history:

• Chronological understanding - sequencing, events, stories, pictures and periods over time to show how different periods relate to each other and contribute to a logical understanding of the past.

• Knowledge and interpretation - concepts that are specific to history and that make it distinct as a subject. Children must understand that history is not black and white but rather shades of grey. There are no right answers but rather different versions of the truth.

• Historical enquiry - processes of investigation undertaken in order to understand the past. Steps in the enquiry process include posing questions, locating and analysing sources and using evidence from sources to develop an informed explanation about the past.

At Priory Lane Community School, history is taught using a blocked curriculum approach through topics. Knowledge retention is supported in our ‘Knowledge of the World’ sessions. This approach ensures that children are able to develop depth in their knowledge and skills over the duration of each of their history topics. Knowledge and skills have been carefully mapped across each history topic to ensure progression – this allows children to make chronological connections to other periods, and embed the knowledge and enquiry skills they have previously been taught. The implementation of the curriculum also ensures a balanced coverage of chronological understanding, knowledge and interpretation and historical enquiry.

The history curriculum at Priory Lane Community School looks like:

• Cross-curricular links made to other curriculum subjects, such as writing historical reports utilising information technology (computing) and interpreting maps of the local area through different periods of time (geography)

• Regular use of I-Pads to support research and presentation of findings

• Maintaining strong links with the local museum and securing access to high-quality artefacts  and other valuable resources

• Focused planning and assessment to ensure that progression of knowledge and skills is effective and consistent across the school.

• ‘Knowledge of the World’ sessions, which support children retain knowledge they have learnt by revisiting past topics.

• Visiting historical sites, which lead to a deeper engagement with historical events and give the children an opportunity to fully appreciate those who lived before them.

• Where opportunities arise, engage the children with inspirational visitors that link to the taught topic.

• Repeated participation in whole school extra-curricular events, such as Black History Month, Women in History and Remembrance Sunday.

"We are not makers of history. We are made by history." Martyn Luther King Jr

History documents...