History

At The Colleton we believe that high quality history lessons will inspire the children to want to know more about the past and to think and act as historians. By linking learning to a range of topics, children have the 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 enable the children to become historians by developing:

• A broad knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past;
• 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 sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.

As part of the planning process, teachers plan a series of lessons for each topic which carefully allow for progression and depth of learning that concentrate on the skills suited to each age group. Our plans use key questions that challenge the children to use their knowledge and apply this in a philosophical way. We also look at developing subject specific vocabulary and embedding this through cross curricular learning opportunities. Whenever possible, we include trips or invite visiting experts in to school to enhance the learning experience for all children.

We measure the impact of history by reflecting on achievement against the planned outcomes, the recorded learning which demonstrates progression across the school and discussions with the children about their learning.