History
Intent
At Avenue Primary Academy we believe history should be concerned with stimulating pupil’s interest and understanding about the life of people who lived in the past. We aim for pupils to develop a sense of identity and a cultural understanding based on their historical heritage. We teach pupils to understand how events in the past have influenced our lives today; we also teach pupils to investigate these past events and, by so doing, develop the skills of enquiry, analysis, interpretation and problem solving.
Implementation
We use a variety of teaching and learning styles in our History lessons. We believe in whole-class teaching methods and we combine this with an enquiry-based approach. We encourage children to learn new substantive knowledge and concepts through the use of a carefully planned enquiry question as a focus for each topic, which they can discuss and debate at the end of each sequence of lessons. We support children to work as a historian would in learning new substantive knowledge, alongside developing their disciplinary knowledge through a variety of different tasks. We offer them the opportunity to use a variety of diverse primary and secondary sources, such as statistics, diary extracts, pictures and photographs, and encourage them to make interpretations and assess these sources for any limitations. We enable them to use ICT in History lessons where this serves to enhance their learning. Children can sometimes work collaboratively or independently, taking part in group discussions, and presenting their ideas to the rest of the class.
We recognise the fact that there are children of widely different historical abilities in all classes and we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this through a layered approach by:
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setting common tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses and outcomes;
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setting differentiated tasks according to ability with increasing difficulty, some children completing only certain sections;
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depending on the task teacher assessment will group children according to their ability or in mixed ability groups;
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providing resources of different complexity according to the ability of the child.
Impact
The outcomes in books, evidence a broad and balanced history curriculum and express children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge relating to each of the identified national curriculum strands, as appropriate to each key stage. As children progress throughout the school, they develop a deep knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. The impact of our history curriculum is that our learners are armed with the disciplinary skills and substantive knowledge that will permit them to be ready for their transition into secondary education and for life as an adult. The children will be able to examine their learning and establish their knowledge and understanding through a variety of activities.
The curriculum overview shows the learning that will take place in history in each year group. The roadmaps show the progression of skills in history as children move through the school.