History

Rationale

At Portfields Primary School, we are dedicated to providing a high-quality enriching History curriculum from EYFS to Year 6. We encourage pupils to develop an appreciation and understanding of the past which is aided through the use of primary and secondary sources. As engaged and curious learners, pupils will develop analytical skills to make links between different periods of history including links to the present day.

Intent

Portfields Primary School provides a history curriculum that is ambitious and designed for all pupils. It is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively providing the necessary knowledge and skills for the pupils’ future to empower them to take their role as informed and active citizens in the 21st century. Its emphasis is not just on historical knowledge but also skills and concepts. It has the same challenging academic ambitions for all pupils. They all work from a shared starting point to answer the same key questions. The content provides pupils with a clear understanding of how people lived in the past and what they believed to be important. Within the units there are recurring themes such as settlement, migration and religion which builds a stronger web of knowledge to ensure it sticks. 

Engaging with challenging themes will enable pupils to connect with what is happening in the world around them. It will enable them to engage in debate about what is happening today and use the past to inform those opinions. Pupils will develop an understanding of how we know about the past through a range of sources of evidence and with increasing confidence will consider their utility and reliability. 

Implementation 

A breadth of teaching approaches appropriate to the content and desired learning outcomes are used to engage all pupils and enable them to not just acquire knowledge but to apply it in meaningful contexts. Appropriate discussion is utilised as a means of checking pupils’ learning systematically, identifying misconceptions and providing immediate feedback. Questions and tasks to stretch and challenge the most able pupils are incorporated where appropriate. Revisiting ideas and concepts in different, more challenging, contexts in later units, using varied assessments and the inclusion of quizzes are all designed to help pupils remember content and integrate new knowledge into their evolving conceptual framework.