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Broomfields Junior School

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History

The aim of history teaching at Broomfield Junior School is to stimulate the children’s interest, understanding and knowledge of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We teach children to understand how events in the past have influenced our lives today; we also teach them to investigate these past events and, by so doing, to develop the skills of enquiry, analysis, interpretation and problem-solving.

Historical enquiry is concerned with the development of creative and critical thought to enable children to see the differences between fact and fiction, the connections between cause and effect and how history has been shaped. To do this they need to be able to find and weigh evidence, sift arguments, reach their own conclusions and to research and put their own point of view with confidence as well as develop perspective and judgement.

intent

Here at Broomfields, History intends to develop a curiosity and understanding of the past, giving pupils a broad and balanced view of some of the major periods of History in Britain and the wider world, in line with National Curriculum Programmes of Study. The curriculum is designed to develop an understanding of chronology and how historical events have impacted the development of the world around them. We encourage them to become analytical thinkers who can use a range of sources of evidence to help explain their findings and opinions.

At Broomfields Junior School our intent is to:

To prepare children for the world in which they live and prepare them for their adult lives in a socially complex and culturally varied society.
To help children to develop a sense of chronology and time and to develop a chronological framework that enables them to sequence events and objects.
To help children to understand the ways in which the past is different to the present and that people of other times and places may have had different values and attitudes to those of people in the present.
To help children to develop an awareness and understanding of the nature of evidence and understand that because of its range and diversity, historical judgments may be provisional and tentative.
To help children to develop an appreciation of change and to understand that change is a result of human inventions, beliefs and motives.
To help the children to develop an understanding of cause and effect.
To help the children to develop historical empathy and so have an informed appreciation of the predicaments and points of view of people in the past.
To help the children to develop the ability to pose historical questions and to make informed judgments.
To help the children to develop the enquiry skills needed to use all kinds of historical evidence in order to offer explanations of past events.
To help the children to distinguish fact and fiction.
To contribute to the personal and social development of the children by helping them to develop a respect for evidence and a tolerance of a range of opinions.
To help the children to develop a range of communication skills using a wide range of media.

Implementation

The school uses a variety of teaching and learning styles in history lessons, which is predominantly taught as a stand-alone subject.

The History curriculum is organised across the school to reflect the National Curriculum Programmes of study with periods of British History following a chronological sequence, with an additional unit of either Ancient Civilisation or Local History for each Year Group. To ensure progression, breadth and coverage of skills, knowledge and vocabulary, History is planned around the Milestone documents of the Chris Quigley Essentials curriculum. Each history topic is organised into half termly units to allow for revisiting of knowledge and skills, and regular retrieval activities are built into planning and lessons.

To develop the curiosity and enjoyment of learning about history, external visits to museums, and living history events, visiting experts and own immersive special days are planned for.

Our principal aim is to develop the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding. We do this through a mixture of whole- class teaching and individual / group activities. Teachers encourage the children to ask as well as answer questions. The children have the opportunity to use a variety of secondary sources of information, where it will enhance learning as well as gaining first hand experiences, for example, the use of books, photographs, artefacts and ICT.

We recognise the fact that we have children of differing historical ability in all our classes and so we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this by:

Setting common tasks that are open-ended and can have a variety of responses
Setting tasks of increasing difficulty (we do not expect all children to complete all tasks)
Grouping children by ability and setting different tasks for each group
Providing a range of challenges with different resources
Using additional adults to support the work of individual children or small groups
Incorporating high order questions to extend the most able children in history

impact

The quality of our History curriculum is high, it is well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills: vocabulary progression also forms part of the units of work. Children will deepen their understanding of the interaction through the opportunity to use a variety of secondary sources of information, where it will enhance learning as well as gaining first hand experiences, for example, the use of books, photographs, artefacts and ICT. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

Imapct is measured through::

Year group medium term planning stored in a central location for regular monitoring by subject lead and accessible to other year groups to check on previous learning.
Regular reviews of pupil’s books across different ability ranges and all year groups by the Subject lead to monitor children’s work and check they are in line with the MTPs.
Pupil voice – regular monitoring of children’s books with the child present to promote discussion about their work and gain a snapshot of their understanding of chronology, knowledge of people, events and changes, and historical interpretation.
Pupil voice to gauge the impact of visits/special subject days with special reference to facts and skills they have retained, and the level of enjoyment/ curiosity they promoted.
Whole school monitoring through INSET, staff meetings and informal discussions to share ideas, disseminate good practice, review progress and highlight areas for development across the school in history.
Head teacher, SLT and Subject Leader monitoring planning to ensure coverage of the programmes of study, the teaching of historical skills and adherence to the agreed guidelines.
learning walks/reviews with governors and SLT.
Communication with staff through informal discussions/emails between the history subject leader and staff to exchange opinions and ascertain needs.
Yearly action plans based on monitoring process and needs arising to promote development of History as a subject in school.
classroom observations that may be made by the Head teacher or subject leader of a particular aspect of the history curriculum, agreed beforehand with the class teacher.