History
Subject Rationale for History
Intent | What and why do we teach what we teach?
At the Learning Academies Trust, we have carefully curated our History curriculum in line with United Learning to engage, inspire and challenge pupils to learn and remember more. Within the United Learning curriculum, there are six core principles, which are: entitlement, coherence, mastery, adaptability, representation, education with character.
The United Curriculum for History provides all children, regardless of their background, with:
- Entitlement -All pupils have the right to learn what is in the United Learning curriculum, and schools have a duty to ensure that all pupils are taught the whole of it
- Coherence - Taking the National Curriculum as its starting point, our curriculum is carefully sequenced so that powerful knowledge builds term by term and year by year. We make meaningful connections within subjects and between subjects
- Mastery - We ensure that foundational knowledge, skills and concepts are secure before moving on. Pupils revisit prior learning and apply their understanding in new contexts
- Adaptability - The core content – the ‘what’ – of the curriculum is stable, but schools will bring it to life in their own local context, and teachers will adapt lessons – the ‘how’ – to meet the needs of their own classes
- Representation - All pupils see themselves in our curriculum, and our curriculum takes all pupils beyond their immediate experience
- Education with Character - Our curriculum - which includes the taught subject timetable as well as spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, our co-curricular provision and the ethos and ‘hidden curriculum’ of the school – is intended to spark curiosity and to nourish both the head and the heart.
Implementation | How and when do we teach what we teach?
Across the LAT, History is taught from EYFS to Year 6 through our LAT-wide curriculum. Our key concepts: Power, Empire and Democracy, Quest for knowledge and Community and Family. Within these main concepts, we have our mini concepts which are woven throughout our curriculum.
Our school has a variety of tools, models and methods are used to scaffold pupils’ learning to enable pupils to remember more and deepen their understanding. This may include and are not limited to: live modelling, questioning, retrieval practice, knowledge organisers, graphic organisers and modified or specialist tools. It is essential that all pupils receive an ambitious and challenging art curriculum from when pupils join us in EYFS to when they leave us in Year 6, ready for Key Stage Three.
In EYFS, History is taught through the ‘Understanding the World’ aspect of the Early Years Statutory Framework. Pupils will explore; how to comment on images of familiar situations in the past.They will compare and contrast characters from stories, including figures from the past and begin to make sense of their own life story and family's history.
The roadmap video above will explain how our History Curriculum progress into Key Stage 1 through Key Stage 2.
Impact | How do we assess the impact of what we teach via pupil outcomes?
History follows the LAT assessment framework. This informs own school's approach to assessment to determine:
- The depth of a pupil's knowledge, understanding and ability to make links in learning.
- The ability for pupils to apply procedural knowledge to skill-based activities.
Within the context of History, the following methods of assessment are used:
Recall knowledge: Pupils will demonstrate an ability to recall facts and information, whilst demonstrating their ability to recall and model the techniques taught. This assessment of pupils’ knowledge in these areas will be used to inform future lessons, they need for additional practice, pre-teach and interventions.
Explore and Question: Using graphic schemas, pupils will be challenged to demonstrate an ability to use their knowledge by being asked rich, varied questions relating to the subject matter. Pupils will be able to use a rich vocabulary to communicate their own thoughts and interpretations of questions relating to the subject. Pupils will demonstrate their understanding of the taught skills, techniques and knowledge to explore their own ideas within History, selecting and exploring the techniques they have developed so far.
Communicate: For each unit, pupils will share what they have learnt through either debate, presentations, teaching others and will justify their opinion. Teachers will provide pupils with opportunities to explore how their learning connects with the wider curriculum.