Intent

At Hillborough Infant and Nursery School, we want our History curriculum to kindle our children’s curiosity about exploring the past.

There is a focus on the development of the children’s specific historical skills and knowledge. This is taught through a topic-based approach and by giving the children hands on experience wherever possible. Our teaching of History aims to equip our children with knowledge about the history of Britain, significant aspects of the history of the wider world, the lives of significant people from the past and changes in living memory.

We want to teach children how to ask and answer questions about the past, developing their inquisitive minds and giving them the opportunities, through many different topics, to help them to love learning about History.

Implement

The core of our History curriculum is the statutory National Curriculum. We have built our school curriculum upon this and reference and visit our local area wherever possible. Our curriculum is designed on a base of skills and knowledge that we want our children to learn in History. We then deliver these skills and knowledge through our topics, which we select to excite and motivate our young children.

Our skills progression document ensures that History is taught in a logical sequence and makes links with the children’s previous learning across the school. This allows them to build on their skills across the year groups.

We teach our children to develop a good awareness of the past, learn where people and the events that we explore fit in within a chronological timeline and start to recognise some similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods of history. We teach them to learn to ask and answer questions about the past, developing their analytical thinking as they progress through their time at Hillborough, and to gain a wide variety of experiences, both in and out of the classroom.

Impact

The outcomes of the broad teaching of History across the school is seen in the children’s topic books, sometimes in the fortnightly newsletter to parents and through various displays that are put up showcasing their work throughout the year.

History assessment is ongoing, to inform teachers with their planning, lesson activities and differentiation. Pupils’ learning can be assessed comparative to their starting points at the end of every topic, using the information on their knowledge organisers. History teaching is also monitored regularly using a variety of strategies, such as book looks, learning walks, lesson observations and pupil voice (here a few children are asked about their experience of History teaching and the knowledge they have acquired).

We aim for all Children to achieve age related expectations in History at the end of the Key Stage and that they will have a good understanding of local history and key world historical events.