We are historians

Intent

At Asquith, we want children to leave us as independent, resilient historians. They will have knowledge of key events and figures in national and global history and the enquiry skills to find out about the past and form their own opinions. We teach history skills and knowledge in a sequence that builds on prior learning. In Early Years, we start from where the children are in terms of their own personal history before exploring the history of Britain and the wider world as they progress through school. We teach history through topics that are chosen to fit the needs of our children, including links to local heritage where appropriate. This allows them to relate the history of their own locality with events from Britain and the wider world.

Our history curriculum aims to deliver the National Curriculum and EYFS Framework ensuring all pupils:

• develop a passion for history and a curiosity about the past
• develop an understanding of how past events have influenced the present
• develop a sense of identity by learning how past events have impacted their local area and communities
• build on enquiry skills to enable them to interpret the past using a wide range of sources
• develop a sense of empathy through learning about the past and its impact on others
• develop a sense of chronology to organise their understanding of the past

Our key historical concepts are:

• Industry & trade – linked to local mining history
• Migration & settlement – linked to increasing local ethnic diversity
• Empire & monarchy – linked to the development of modern Britain

We aim to promote Wonderful Words by:

• immersing pupils in rich historical vocabulary, enabling them to communicate their ideas with clarity, confidence, and precision
• revisiting these words regularly so that they become embedded.

We aim to develop Readers for life by:

• using a range of high-quality, engaging texts to explore historical narratives, sources and accounts.

We aim to provide opportunities by:

• Taking children on trips and speaking to visitors to support children to understand and empathise with people and events from the past.
• Using a wide range of different sources and artefacts to investigate, question, and discover how past events have shaped our present.

We aim to encourage pupils to Dream Big by:

• showing them a diverse range of significant individuals, cultures, and achievements, helping them to realise that they too can make a positive impact on the world.

Rooted in Our School Values

Through the teaching of history, we embed our core school values:

• Determination – children persevere in exploring challenging concepts and sources
• Honesty – children learn to question reliability and recognise bias
• Responsibility – they reflect on how history influences the choices we make today
• Respect – children learn to appreciate different cultures, beliefs, and viewpoints
• Understanding – children develop empathy for people from different times and places
• Cooperation - children work together to investigate evidence and share ideas

Implementation

Our history curriculum is divided into disciplinary and substantive knowledge. Our disciplinary knowledge are the skills of a historian including understanding chronology, historical interpretation and enquiry and understanding cause and effect. Our substantive knowledge is the specific historical events, people or time periods they are studying.

We use our key historical concepts to support our children to make strong learning links within and across different time periods.

Our lessons are sequenced to build on children's prior disciplinary knowledge as they move through school. Our substantive learning will be explicit as our children build their knowledge of the past.

Our teaching is supported by quality resources and experiences, such as visiting sites of historical significance alongside hearing visitors talk about their experiences of the past. We also use artefacts and experiences to support children with their empathy skills and to immerse them in the past.

By embedding our disciplinary skills, children will be able to form their own historical arguments and justify their thoughts and ideas.

Our history lessons will take into consideration the needs of all pupils including SEND children and EAL children and adaptations are made to enable all children to achieve their full potential.

Impact

Through our history curriculum, we work to develop children who are independent, resilient historians. Our children will have a broad knowledge and understanding of events and significant individuals from the past. They will build a sense of chronology and be curious about the past. Our children will leave us with the enquiry skills to be able to find out about the past and have an awareness of the reliability of the sources they use. We aim for our children to build a sense of identity by understanding how events from the past have impacted on their own community.

We assess the impact of the children’s learning through:

• Assessment for learning, through regular well planned review sessions, ‘ticket to exit’ recall questions, independent tasks, focussed questioning and quizzes inform future planning so that we can pick up on misconceptions, fill gaps in learning and ensure children make good progress.
• We have set out five or six focus objectives for each unit which we want children to know. These are knowledge and skills that will help them with future learning and allow them to make links and build an understanding of key historical concepts. These are what we will assess against after each unit of work.