History

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” Matthew 7:24

Just as the wise builder chose to build his house on solid foundations, so a well-lived, successful life requires solid foundations. Through our curriculum, we aim to give our children the knowledge and skills – the foundations - they need to become fulfilled, successful, loving adults in their world.

History Intent

At Netheravon, we believe that it is crucial that our children develop an understanding of the events and people that have shaped our nation and its values, the history of the wider world, and how these impact upon us in the present. By finding out about how life has developed over time, children understand how the past influences the present and how they, in turn, can influence the future. We want children at Netheravon to develop tools to evaluate information about the past and make informed judgements based on this through asking perceptive questions, thinking critically, evaluating evidence, and having empathy towards difference. Our aim is for all children to understand more about themselves as individuals as well as members of wider society.

Implementation

Netheravon’s History scheme aims to reflect our core values of service, courage and faith by introduce children to key substantive concepts including power, invasion, settlement and migration, empire, civilisation, religion, trade, achievements of humankind, society and culture. These have been carefully considered to reflect the contexts and communities of our children, including selecting concepts that allow the exploration of relevant issues such as migration and warfare as well as considering the wealth of history in the local area. Trips and visitors help to enrich this learning, bring history to life and enable children to understand that they are learning about real people and real events locally, nationally and globally. In recent years children have visited local historical sites including Stonehenge, Netheravon Air Field and their village war memorial. They have also handled and interrogated artefacts both during visits, as well as in school.  

In order to meet the aims of the National curriculum for History and in response to the Ofsted  Research review into History, the curriculum has been designed to enable skills and knowledge for History to be built on sequentially and repeated systematically in the following strands:

Impact

Through the high quality first teaching of History taking place, we will see the impact of the subject in different ways:

• Through pupil voice children will be able to talk about the skills and knowledge they have acquired. Children will be engaged in History lessons and want to find out more. Children will complete research independently through projects and homework and to further their own enjoyment about the subject or topic.
• Work in books will show that a range of topics is being covered, cross curricular links are made where possible and differentiated work set as appropriate.
• The school environment will be history rich through displays, resources, vocabulary etc.
• As historians, children will learn lessons from history to influence the decisions they make in their lives in the future. Assessments and monitoring will show standards in History will be high and will match standards in other subject areas.

As our Year 6 pupils transition to secondary school, we aspire that they will have developed a historical mind of inquiry. Pupils will also have a strong chronological understanding of historical events, making connection between their influence on the past and their potential influence on future events.