History

At Park our aims within teaching History are:

• To provide children with stimulating and enjoyable experiences of History which foster a keen interest and a deeper understanding of the lives of people in the past. 
• Building on our children’s natural curiosity and developing a historical approach to problem solving.
• To provide a desire for enquiry and analysis and to interpret the past.
• To develop an understanding of chronology and how events have shaped Britain. How Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world.
• To develop an understanding of our local and wider community.
• To know and sequence significant aspects of British History.
• To use ICT to help develop historical enquiry.
• To develop children’s questioning and analysis thus enabling them to make good progress through KS1 and KS2.

Teaching and Learning

• That we teach History in ways that are creative, imaginative, enjoyable and purposeful. Lessons are always adapted to fully support our children’s needs. 
• We teach through a skills based curriculum and ensure that there is planned progression within each unit thus challenging all children.
• Upon being questioned giving clear and accurate explanations and in return offering open ended questions to peak interest and assess understanding.
• Where possible making cross curricular links between History and other core and secondary subjects.
• The children study their history topics in conjunction with other subjects. We teach the knowledge, skills and understanding set out in the National Curriculum through the corresponding programme of study.
• To provide children with a sense of their own identity and provide links within a social, political, cultural and economic background and relationships.
• In History we aim to link our unit into Oxfam’s 7 Values where it is possible.

Early Years Foundation Stage

Within the Foundation Stage historical enquiry skills are promoted and developed through the Curriculum Area of Knowledge and Understanding of the World. The skills are taught through cross-curricular topics as part of the Foundation Curriculum. Children will develop the Key Learning Skills of; communication, observation, describing, research, chronology and vocabulary. Whilst they are in EYFS they will discuss the lives of the people around them and their roles in society and identify some similarities and differences between the past and now through drawing on their experiences. Also by understanding the past through settings, characters and events encountered in books read in class and through storytelling. 

SEND and Equal Opportunities

Planning should take into account the needs, gender and race within each year group so that all children find the work accessible, stimulating and, whenever possible, appropriate to their interests.

Within History, to aid children who have additional needs, we ensure that our lessons are scaffolded and that teaching is explicit; this includes explaining, modelling and questioning. We use technology to model processes and present ideas visually. Flexible grouping of children, enables them to utalise their peers for collaborative learning.

We aim to give all children the opportunity to develop an appreciation of History from different cultures and time periods, through studying different regions from around the world.