St Paul's Catholic Primary School

Intent:

Our History curriculum at St. Paul’s includes half-termly topics for all children from Year 1 to Year 6.

We aim to offer a high-quality history education that will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ intellectual curiosity to know more about the past and make links with the present world.

History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups. It also helps children gain a sense of their own identity within a social, political, cultural and economic background. Because of this, we feel it is important for the subject to be taught discreetly but also incorporated within other curriculum subjects such as English and Art.

During each session, teaching should engage all pupils of all abilities. Class teachers deliver high-quality history sessions so that children can develop the following skills:

- ask perceptive questions

- think critically

- weigh evidence

- sift arguments

- develop perspective and judgement.

Implementation

All learning will start by revisiting prior knowledge and the so called ‘hook lesson’.

The first objective will be scaffolded to support children to recall previous learning and make connections. Staff will model explicitly the subject-specific vocabulary, knowledge and skills relevant to the learning to allow them to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts. All staff will support their children by using a range of visual resources, for instance knowledge organisers, timelines, pictorials. The consistent use of these resources supports children at St Paul’s  to retain new facts and vocabulary in their long term memory. Knowledge organisers are used for pre-teaching, to support home learning and also as a part of daily review.

Impact

At St Paul’s Catholic Primary, Pupil Voice, Learning Walks and regular monitoring show that pupils are confident and able to talk about what they have learnt in history using subject specific vocabulary. Pupil Voice also demonstrates that pupils enjoy history and are able to recall their learning over time. Pupils work demonstrates that history is taught at an age appropriate standard across each year group with opportunities planned in for pupils working at greater depth. Work is of good quality and demonstrates pupils are acquiring knowledge, skills and vocabulary in an appropriate sequence.