Intent 

 At Chigwell Row our engaging history curriculum aims to inspire and spark children’s interest in the past and encourages the children to think like historians. Our curriculum promotes enthusiasm, positive attitudes and curiosity about the childrens’ own history and how this links with wider historical contexts and events. We intend for our History curriculum to be accessible and engaging to every child. It develops a secure understanding of similarities and differences of life in different time periods and allows children to make links between different historical events and historical figures. It allows children to see how changes which have occurred in living memory have led to changes that impact our daily lives.

Implementation

In the Early Years children are taught through the Early Years Curriculum: Understanding the World.  The children learn about historical events, people and lifestyles through meaningful discussion with adults and making links with the topics and texts that the class is focusing on. For example in the topic ‘People who help us’ the children look at the differences between nurses in the past and nurses now.  The children’s exposure to past lifestyles and events is enhanced through discussions, curiosity-provoking tasks, and high quality texts. 

In KS1 we follow the Collins Connect History Scheme which has been adapted to suit our rolling curriculum with a Year A and B cycle. This ensures the curriculum is covered at the end of Key Stage one, without repeating any topics. History is taught once a term, over a half term period. This ensures the children have enough time to explore the question thoroughly, deepen their learning and develop their enthusiasm and curiosity. Each topic is taught through an enquiry question, which is broken down into individual questions for each weekly lesson.  We look for cross curricular opportunities where possible, for example our HIstory topic ‘ How do we know so much about the Great Fire of London? ’ is linked with our English texts about the Great Fire of London.  Half term projects are used to allow children to explore and investigate topics before the unit of work. 

Additional opportunities in History are provided through workshops and educational visits.

Impact  

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught as well as during the lessons. 
• Marking of work in books (plans, diagrams, evaluations) 
•  Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice)
• Low stake quizzes within lessons
• Adult questioning and prompting
• Observations of the pupils’ abilities during the creation of different projects.

Our History  Topic Overview

history topic overview template.pdf