At Aldryngton Primary School, we believe that children should acquire both the knowledge and skills to be a historian. We want them to be excited learning about new people, events and situations and perceive history as a stimulating and rewarding subject. Our aim is that the children can use what they’ve learned before about how to ‘do history’ to help them with a new topic. Enquiry is central to the children’s learning – creating enquiry sequences introduces children to new elements of the ‘story’, helping them develop more detailed responses as the sequence progresses. Lesson by lesson, learners gain the substantive content knowledge needed to answer the enquiry question effectively.
We recognise history as having cultural capital that all our children should have access to and therefore place great value on it teaching it as a discrete subject from KS1, whilst also making links with other areas of the curriculum, for example, English and Art.
How do we plan History teaching at Aldryngton?
Our history curriculum has been designed to cover both statutory and non-statutory aspects of the National Curriculum.
All teachers have access to quality teaching schemes through our membership with the Historical Association and use these to create a tailored history curriculum, making local links when possible. A subscription is also had to Keystage History.
Knowledge Organisers are used to identify the powerful (basic but essential) knowledge we want our children to have, including dates, key people, vocabulary, definitions, and other information. Knowledge Organisers will be shared with pupils, parents and carers before units of work are taught, with the aim that everyone knows exactly what is being taught, and what the children need to learn.
The EYFS framework is structured very differently to the national curriculum and is organised across seven areas of learning rather than subject areas. The most relevant statements for history are taken from the following area of learning: Understanding the World. At Aldryngton, History is taught through some of the following topics in EYFS – Marvellous Me, Celebrations, Transport, Traditional Tales.