History
Vision
Our vision for History at Seaview Primary School is to provide learning experiences that fire children’s curiosity about the past in Britain, and the wider world. This also includes developing their understanding of the rich history of their locality - Seaham and its local area. We aim to equip children with knowledge of how historians investigate the past, and how they construct their claims, arguments and accounts. We strive to enable children to develop a chronological framework for their knowledge of significant events and people that will provide the foundations for their History learning at secondary school and beyond.
SEND & Inclusion
The Seaview History curriculum holds high expectations for all. The curriculum has been carefully designed, and learning materials purposefully chosen to ensure that they are inclusive and accessible for all. Children with SEND access the relevant historical content for their age but adaptions are made to support them, such as: providing first hand experiences (handling artefacts, educational visits, guest speakers), using visuals and manipulatives to illustrate abstract or new vocabulary or concepts, and the use of video and audio to support understanding. Teachers provide sentence stems and scaffolds to aid written and verbal responses to questions in History lessons. Opportunities for regular peer discussion are planned for, and where appropriate, pre-teaching of new vocabulary before lessons is used to aid understanding of the core historical knowledge.
Curriculum
At Seaview, we teach knowledge about local, British, and world history that progresses and builds from EYFS to Year 6. We encourage children to make links between their learning in History through ‘golden threads’. Each unit of work begins with an over-arching enquiry question that allows both knowledge and skills to develop over time. Every lesson within each unit has its own disciplinary skill focus and substantive knowledge focus.
Our History curriculum focuses on the development of 6 disciplinary skills: chronology, historical enquiry, interpreting history, similarity and difference, cause and consequence, and historical significance.
Chronology
In order to develop a strong chronological understanding, children are given time to explore, interpret and construct timelines that not only show what happened when but that tell the story of significant events within a time period. In EYFS, children begin thinking about the concepts of old and new, and in the past. In KS1, children build on this by creating timelines about their own lives and the milestones they have achieved from birth to now. They learn about key concepts relating to the passing of time including days, weeks, months, years, decades and centuries. To aid understanding of these concepts, Base 10 equipment is used to visually represent years, decades and centuries. In KS2, children develop a coherent chronology of British history spanning from the Stone Age (around 3 million years ago) to 1066 A.D. and beyond. They begin to think about concurrence and why this is important when piecing together knowledge of the past.
Historical Enquiry
Engaging, purposeful historical enquiry is at the heart of our curriculum. In EYFS, children handle familiar objects and look at photographs looking closely to identify changes that have occurred. In KS1, children ask simple questions about the past, and are supported in using sources to answer these questions. Sources evidence can include oral history accounts, written accounts, photographs, artefacts and newspaper articles. In KS2, children are encouraged to ask and answer more complex questions about the past, and suggest where they could find the answers to these questions. Opportunities for children to analyse a wide range of sources, bring knowledge gathered from several sources into a fluent account, and make their own historical interpretations are planned for. As they progress, children understand that there may be omissions from sources and work to suggest reasons why things may been have left out.
Interpreting History
Children should be taught to understand that the past can interpreted in different ways depending on the evidence available and historians’ own biases. In EYFS, children begin to understand that people may have different memories about the same event. They unpick familiar nursery rhymes (such as Polly Put the Kettle On and Wee Willie Winkie) that include some historical interpretations about life in the past. In KS1, children begin to compare two versions of the same event and begin to discuss the reliability of sources of evidence. In KS2, children investigate why different evidence may lead to different conclusions by linking sources and working out how conclusions were made. They consider ways of checking the accuracy of interpretations – fact or fiction and opinion, and start to understand the difference between primary and secondary evidence.
Similarity and Difference
In EYFS, children begin to look for similarities and differences within their immediate environment, including comparing features and materials of old and new toys. In KS1, children look for similarities and differences between older items or inventions and their modern versions (the Wright Flyer vs modern planes, and the early fire service vs the modern fire service). In KS2, children develop this concept by describing similarities and differences between historical periods, linked to a key concept such as monarchy, trade, democracy, empire. They also name changes within a time period and give more detailed reasons as to why these changes may have occurred. The idea of continuity is also developed so that children have an understanding that certain things may have stayed the same over time.
Understanding the causes that led to historical events occurring and the consequences this had on life at the time and beyond is important. In EYFS, children begin to gain an understanding that things change around them and they begin to offer simple explanations as to the causes of these changes. In KS1, children think about why people from the past did things, why some historical events happened and begin to think about the results of people’s actions or events. In KS2, children explore the causes of change within and across different time periods, and the impact these on life at the time and beyond.
Historical Significance
In order to ensure that the children have a solid understanding of a range of historically significant people and events, each year group have their own people and events to study. In EYFS, children talk about memories and events that are significant to themselves. By keeping the focus tight, children begin to understand what importance and significance means in a way that is relatable to them. In KS1, children learn about people and events that are considered to be historically significant, both locally and nationally. This includes study of significant individuals such as Neil Armstrong and Grace Darling, and events such as the coronation of King Charles III and the Great Fire of London. In KS2, children are able to name a variety of historically significant individuals, events and developments, that had an impact on life then and now. They consider the different reasons as to why some of these are seen as more significant than others. Examples of significant individuals studied in KS2 include: Howard Carter, Alexander the Great, Boudicca, Saint Aidan, Lord Londonderry and John Candlish.