Burnham-on-Sea Infant School
History Curriculum Overview
Curriculum Lead: Lucy Vinnicombe
Our curriculum approach to history reflects our ethos statement ‘Working Together Building Futures’ providing all our children rich opportunities to find out about the past and how it has influenced the world around us.
Intent (curriculum design, coverage and appropriateness) :
Our aim of the History curriculum is to inspire our children to be curious about Somerset, Britain’s past and of the rest of the world. We will support our children to think and act as historians using an enquiry-based approach where the children are expected to think critically and be able to ask and answer questions. The children are equipped with the vocabulary that they need to become historians and to talk about the past and the passing of time. Lessons provide opportunities for children to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using a range of primary and secondary sources. We want children to gain knowledge and skills through different experiences in the classroom and understand how our future can be influenced by the past.
Implementation (curriculum delivery, teaching and assessment):
At Burnham on Sea Infants, to ensure that high quality history is taking place throughout the whole school we implement a curriculum which is progressive from EYFS through to Year 2. History lessons are planned through our termly topics with a focus on knowledge and skills. All lessons have a strong focus on vocabulary which ensures that all children can talk about history using the appropriate language. The subject leader ensures that knowledge and skills within history lessons are progressive through the school through monitoring and evaluating.
History is the study of people, actions, decisions, interactions and behaviours. At Burnham Infants, History is taught through enquiry based questions. using 4 key disciplinary concepts of:
Continuity and change | Cause and consequence | Similarity, difference and Significance | Historical enquiry |
To discuss and evaluate the extent to which a historical development or event represents a decisive historical change. This shows how the past can affect the present.
| To discover that things do not simply 'happen' without reason but are caused by things that occurred before them. Historical events also create changes that have consequences long after the event is over.
| To move beyond stereotypical assumptions about people in the past, to recognise and analyse the diversity of past experience. This enables comparisons of opinion and points of view. To understand why an event or individual was important.
| To ask questions or hypothesise about the past using sources of evidence. To observe, deduce, select, combine and evaluate historical artefacts and concepts. Children get the chance to investigate, ask questions and justify their answer. |
This is underpinned by our key substantive concepts (themes that are revisited and built upon in readiness for KS2).
Our key substantive concepts are:
beliefs, society, settlement, civilisation, nation, voyage, empire, monarchy, trade, immigration, commemoration.
The journey begins for Early Years Foundation Stage with a mixture of taught sessions and practical exploration through child initiated play. In Key Stage 1 the children have a history focus each term, each underpinned by key historical questions. Each new unit is sequenced so that it consolidates and builds on prior learning and explicit links and made between different historical periods studied. Exploratory learning provides access to learning for all children. Further details can be found in the knowledge and skills link below.
Impact (attainment and progress):
Children will know more, remember more and understand more British history. Children will be able to think critically about the past and be able to ask and answer questions. They will be able to talk about history using historical language which will be built upon each year. Children will understand and use the key skills: chronological understanding, knowledge and understanding of events in the past, historical interpretation, historical enquiry and organisation and communication.
The history lead at Burnham In Sea Infants:
- helps design the curriculum map and then monitor in order to ensure that units are being taught at the correct time
- completes learning walks, talks to pupils about their learning and discusses with colleagues successes and barriers
- is available to offer subject knowledge and advice when needed to support subject teaching staff in their understanding and delivery of the history curriculum
- ensures their support knowledge and subject leadership is supported through engagement with professional bodies such at The History Association.
Review
October 2023
Unfortunately not the ones with chocolate chips.
Our cookies ensure you get the best experience on our website.
Please make your choice!
Some cookies are necessary in order to make this website function correctly. These are set by default and whilst you can block or delete them by changing your browser settings, some functionality such as being able to log in to the website will not work if you do this. The necessary cookies set on this website are as follows:
A 'sessionid' token is required for logging in to the website and a 'crfstoken' token is
used to prevent cross site request forgery.
An 'alertDismissed' token is used to prevent certain alerts from re-appearing if they have
been dismissed.
An 'awsUploads' object is used to facilitate file uploads.
We use Matomo cookies to improve the website performance by capturing information such as browser and device types. The data from this cookie is anonymised.
Cookies are used to help distinguish between humans and bots on contact forms on this website.
A cookie is used to store your cookie preferences for this website.
Cookies that are not necessary to make the website work, but which enable additional functionality, can also be set. By default these cookies are disabled, but you can choose to enable them below: