The History Curriculum
Watch our History Curriculum video below and read more about the curriculum in the documents section on this page.
History Curriculum Intent
To inspire and ignite the curiosity of the past and present and to understand the impact that historical events can have on our lives.
“Pupils’ attendance is above the national average. Pupils are punctual to lessons and are well prepared to learn”.
Ofsted 2018
Our History Vision
At Kentmere we value the importance of History and its place in the children’s learning. Through careful planning, we deliver high-quality history education which will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world.
We aim to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past and equip them to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, shift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. We believe that History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.
We focus on 5 key Historical concepts which we link throughout each topic. They ensure that the children are not simply learning facts, but they are developing relevant and useful skills which can be used for future investigation. The concepts are:
- Historical curiosity
- Historical concepts
- Historical interpretation
- Historical enquiry
- Historical communication
We have created a skills progression document to ensure that the children’s skills are being built upon year on year, whilst also planning in subject-specific vocabulary, as well as links across other subjects. It is important that our children have the opportunity to construct their own opinions, arguments and have the ability to balance evidence based on secure knowledge and the ability to research independently, which are addressed through the above historical concepts.
We have four themes of learning which run through our History curriculum to provide the children with opportunities to compare and contrast different periods of History and ensuring the children have a connected understanding rather than just isolated facts. These four themes are: migration, democracy,beliefs and achievements.
As with all other curriculum subjects at Kentmere, we teach History with a big focus on Growth Mindset and the idea of ‘yet’. We want our children to be confident, happy, independent and resilient. We assess the children’s learning in a number of ways. Initially, we can see how successful our teaching has been by the children’s response, engagement and enjoyment. History is a very popular subject at Kentmere because the children enjoy learning about, being part of and constructing their own ideas about History.
The ways in which children respond, make links and partake in discussions is identified and used as a way of assessing their progress in History. This can be both in written and oral methods. Children at Kentmere are very keen Historians who have a good knowledge of local, British and World history. They understand the impact that each part of History has had on today’s world and the ways in which we live and they are able to identify key similarities and differences between time periods. Children leave us with a love of their history and a desire to explore further. Historians at Kentmere leave school able to construct arguments based on the strongest evidence they can muster. To do this, they use written arguments to marshall their thinking, organise evidence, construct more robust and meaningful history and ultimately, communicate with each other.
Watch our History Video
We hope you will watch our video that will show you some of the amazing learning and fun that takes place in our school. Our pupils had fun being filmed and showcasing their work.
