Intent

At High Hazels Academy, we believe that high-quality history lessons inspire children to want to know more about the past and to think and act as historians.

By linking learning to a theme, children have opportunities to investigate and interpret the past, understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s past as well as that of the wider world, and to be able to communicate historically. We develop children with the following essential characteristics to help them become historians:

• An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past;
• Learning about the concept of chronology, which underpins children's developing sense of period, as well as key concepts such as change and causation;
• The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences;
• The ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources;
• The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry;
• A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning;
• A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics;
• A developing sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.

Implementation

Teachers are provided with an additional three planning days per year in addition to their PPA, to plan their curriculum. As part of this planning process, teachers need to plan the following:

• A knowledge organiser which outlines knowledge (including vocabulary) all children must master and apply in lessons;
• A cycle of lessons for each subject, which carefully plans for progression and depth concentrating on the historical skills suited to the age group;
• A low stakes quiz which is tested regularly to support learners’ ability to block learning and increase space in the working memory.

Impact

Our History Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• A celebration of learning for each term which demonstrates progression across the school;
• Tracking of gains in each quiz;
• Pupil discussions about their learning to evidence children knowing more and remembering more.

History long term plan

History progression map