History

Our history curriculum is coherent, planned, sequenced, progressive, challenging and aims to meet all the requirements of the National Curriculum from EYFS to year 6. It gives opportunities for mastery in history, helping all children to aspire, to achieve the best they can in all the learning they explore.

A high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments and develop perspective and judgement. 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. National Curriculum 2014.

History teaches pupils to look back at the past of Britain and the wider world with a critical, curious and reflective mind. It stimulates and encourages pupils to find similarities and differences between different periods of time and to recognise change.

At St Paul’s, we aim for our children to be masters of their own learning in History. In order to do this, the aims of History at our school are:

• To stimulate the pupils’ interest and understanding about the lives of people who lived in the past.
• To support pupils in gaining a sense of chronology.
• To develop, within the pupils, a sense of identity and cultural understanding based on their historical heritage.
• To motivate pupils to understand and value other people’s cultures and traditions.
• To prompt pupils to understand how events in the past have influenced our lives today.
• To embolden pupils to note connections, contrasts and trends over time.
• To encourage pupils to consider change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance in relation to different historical periods.

In order to meet the above aims and for children to deepen their understanding and become masters of their learning, all children should be taught to:

• Investigate past events
• Develop skills of enquiry, analysis, interpretation and problem solving
• Generate and ask perceptive questions
• Think critically
• Weigh evidence
• Examine arguments
• Develop perspective and judgement