History
At Gascoigne Primary School, we are dedicated to providing all children with a creative and immersive history curriculum. We believe that teaching history opens pupils’ minds to the past, stimulating their interest and imagination while equipping them with vital skills to interpret events supported by evidence. Through history, pupils will develop the concepts of chronology, historical enquiry, and knowledge.
Aims and Objectives:
Through our teaching of history, we aim:
- To enhance and develop children’s historical skills, concepts, knowledge, and attitudes.
- To instil in children an interest in the past and cultivate an understanding that enables them to appreciate all that history has to offer.
- To enable children to learn about significant events in British history and to understand how things have changed over time.
- To help children grasp the concepts of time and chronology.
- To provide children with knowledge and understanding of historical developments in the wider world.
- To aid children in understanding society and their place in it, fostering a sense of their cultural heritage.
- To develop in children the skills of enquiry, investigation, analysis, evaluation, and presentation within their local area.
Key Stage One
The National Curriculum at Key Stage One focusses on developing children’s awareness of the past, using common words and phrases related to the passing of time.
Pupils will be taught about:
- Changes within living memory.
- Events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally.
- The lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
- Significant historical events, people, and places in their own locality.
By the end of Key Stage 2, pupils should be able to:
- Ask and answer questions, choosing and using parts of stories and other sources to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of key events.
- Show understanding of some of the ways in which we find out about the past and identify different ways in which it is represented.
- Use a wide vocabulary of everyday historical terms.
Key Stage Two
The National Curriculum at Key Stage 2 continues to enable children to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local, and world history, establishing clear narratives within and across the periods they study. They should observe connections, contrasts, and trends over time and develop the appropriate use of historical terms.
Pupils will be taught about:
- Changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.
- The Roman Empire and its impact on Britain.
- Britain’s settlement by Anglo-Saxons and Scots.
- The achievements of the earliest civilizations.
- A study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066 - The Tudors, The Victorians, World War II.
- Significant individuals such as Galileo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin.
- Ancient Greece – a study of Greek life and achievements and their influence on the western world.
- A non-European society that provides contrasts with British history – Mayan civilization, Ancient Egypt.
Curriculum Links
At Gascoigne Primary, we use History to promote learning across many areas of the National Curriculum, including:
- The application of all basic skills (including Reading, Writing, and Mathematics) within the History curriculum.
- The use of computing for both finding and presenting historical data.
- Citizenship, through moral, social, and cultural development as a ‘Rights Respecting School.’
- Developing language skills through reading and writing a variety of texts.
- Application of number skills through historical research and enquiry.
- Developing geographical knowledge while learning about past events in other places.
- Exploring art, music, and technology from the past as sources of evidence.