Subject Lead: Miss Chambers
At Denbigh, History is taught through a topic to provide children with cross-curricular opportunities. Our staff aim to inspire pupil’s curiosity about the past in Britain and the wider world. Our curriculum is designed to give pupils a sense of identity by studying the past to understand the present and to inform the future. We encourage our pupils to be inquisitive by asking and answering questions, making predictions and reasoning with the teacher as the facilitator, con-contractor and co-participant to create young historians.
Our key concepts:
- Interpreting evidence
- Chronology
- Changes and continuity
- Cause and consequence
- Significant people, places and events
In EYFS the children learn about their own history and events in their own past, which is relevant to them and gives them a sense of time. KS1 builds upon previous learning by continuing to look at events within their living memory and then beginning to extend this to look at events beyond their memory. Year 1 and 2 topics are linked to the local area and local historical famous people to make this meaningful for the children.
In key stage two history is taught in chronological order so that our children receive a coherent, chronological narrative from the earliest times to the present day. This affords our pupils the opportunity to make links and build on their previous learning.
We make every effort to develop meaningful and memorable links between subjects to give our pupils a cross-curricular context. Through our link with North Tyneside’s library service, we are able to immerse the children in their topics by using books and real artefacts in our classrooms. This allows the children to experience our topics first hand and puts it into a meaningful context for them allowing them to deepen their understanding of the topic. We create engaging lessons using drama and to reinforce their learning, we employ theatre groups and visitors to bring the subject alive. Visitors and educational trips are frequently used across the whole school where possible in every year group to allow the children first-hand experiences. Throughout the year we have special subject dress up days to fully immerse the children in their learning. As well as a whole school heritage day which children spend working alongside specialists from various local industries to give our children an insight into life in the past. Grandparents and great grandparents also play a vital part in this by coming along and sharing their experiences and stories, as well as allowing our children to ask questions about their lives.
Staff at Denbigh know that good History occurs in our school when:
- It is led by the children, interests them and is memorable to them.
- Children are talking, laughing, engaged and enjoying History through a range of interactive and practical activities.
- Children are actively involved in their own learning, asking questions, looking for the answers and planning their own work.
- History is differentiated and inclusive with children making progress throughout the lesson.
- Good quality assessment and Assessment for Learning is used to inform planning and builds on children’s prior learning.