Monksmead School

Respect, Reflect, Believe, Succeed

History

 

Intent

At Monksmead, we pride ourselves on our creative learning environment and classroom displays. The history curriculum at Monksmead makes full use of resources within immediate and wider local area enabling the children to develop a deep understanding of the history of their locality.

Topics are informed by the national curriculum and are sensitive to children’s interests, as well as the context of the local area. The history curriculum has been carefully planned and structured to ensure the current learning is linked to previous learning and prepares children for their next step. In line with the national curriculum (2014), our aim is to ensure all pupils; gain coherent knowledge, understand Britain’s past and that of the wider world, helping to stimulate and encourage curiosity to know more about the past. In line with our curriculum drivers children are encouraged to ask questions, think critically, weigh evidence and develop perspectives when understanding the complexities of people’s lives, the process of change, diversities of societies, relationships between different groups as well as their own identity.

 

 

Implementation

All learning will start by revisiting prior knowledge. This 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.

Learning will be supported using knowledge organisers that provide children with scaffolding that supports them to retain new facts and vocabulary in their long-term memory. Knowledge organisers are used for pre-teaching, to support home learning and as a part of daily review.

The CUSP Primary Curriculum offers full coverage of the KS1 and KS2 History curriculum, with connection to the EYFS curriculum. The CUSP Curriculum, developed by Unity Schools, is underpinned by evidence, research, and cognitive science. Modules are deliberately sequenced for robust progression building upon and revisiting prior learning. There is an emphasis on rich knowledge and vocabulary acquisition. Retrieval practice strengthens the memory trace and is used to break down learning barriers and accelerate progress for all pupils.    In History we also use PlanBee to support the children's learning.

It is a high quality and ambitious curriculum supported by high-quality images and diagrams to enrich and inspire learning. In KS1 and KS2, history is taught in focused teaching sessions that sit within a curriculum sequence built around the principles of interleaving and spaced retrieval practice. This ensures full coverage across the whole school.

Cumulative curriculum quizzes are used to review learning and check that children know more and remember more. These are based on the Kagan research and require children to think deeply. Learning is reviewed also on a termly basis, after a period of forgetting, so that teachers can check whether information has been retained.

Our historians will be given a variety of experiences both in and out of the classroom where appropriate to create memorable learning opportunities and to further support and develop their understanding.

 

Impact

The intended impact of the teaching and learning of History at Monksmead School follows our school drivers:

  • Self-Awareness – As historian’s children will learn lessons from history to influence the decisions they make throughout their lives.
  • Embrace differences – Children will understand and use the key skills of chronological understanding, knowledge of past events, historical interpretation and historical enquiry. Through learning about role-models, significant people and influential key figures from the past, our children will respect the work of others and demonstrate respect.
  • Ambitious to take the next step – Emphasis is placed on analytical thinking and questioning and children demonstrate a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. In addition to being confident in their learning, children will be curious and enthusiastic to know more about the past.
  • Worldy-Wise – Children will know more, remember more and understand more about History. They will adopt a personal enjoyment and enthusiasm for learning about the past whether this is at school, in future education or at home.