The History Curriculum

A high-quality history education helps pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It will inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

The national curriculum for history aims to ensure that all pupils:

• know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world

• know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind

• gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’

• understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses

• understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed

• gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and inernations history; between cultural, ecomnomic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short and long-term timescales.

What we study:

Our school follows the CUSP history curriculum. CUSP focusses on building a comprehensive set of historical enquiry skills and understanding of the key concepts outlines in the National Curriculum. It works by revisiting prior learning at regular intervals, allowing children to connect their knowledge about different time periods together and compare what life was like in different locations or civilisations which existed at the same time.

Children also benefit from applying their history knowledge in other curriculum areas. For example: children revisit their Year 1 knowledge about Mary Anning in Year 6 Science lessons; Year 5 children use their knowledge from Year 3 about Egyptians when reading Secrets of the Sun King; and Year 6 learning about Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria's empire building is linked to Geography topics such as the Commonwealth.

What we are learning each term