History

“People without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”

At Aylesham, we encourage all pupils to develop a deep curiosity about the history of the world around them, how events and people have shaped the way we live our lives and how history will shape our future.  History helps children to understand the process of change, the diversity of societies as well as understanding their own identity and the challenges of our time.

We have defined the key characteristics of History at Aylesham as: 

• An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes. 
• The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
• The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.
• A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgments.

Our curriculum in History supports our children to understand that knowledge of the past can influence positive change for the future. Children develop self -confidence by having opportunities to explain their views on a number of questions such as how society should respond to conflict arising from different beliefs or cultures or whether they think significant individuals are just as influential today. 

We integrate the core British values into History topics.  For example, children discover how to be active citizens in a democratic society by learning how laws are made and changed. They learn society is made up of people from different cultures and start to develop respect, understanding and tolerance for others 

How we structure our curriculum in History

Our scheme emphasises the importance of historical knowledge being shaped by disciplinary approaches. These strands are interwoven through all our History units to create engaging and enriching learning experiences which allow the children to investigate history as historians do.

Our scheme follows a spiral curriculum model with the following key principles in mind:

• Cyclical: Pupils return to the same disciplinary and substantive concepts during their time in primary school.
• Increasing depth: Each time a concept is revisited, it is covered with greater complexity.
• Prior knowledge: Upon returning to each concept, prior knowledge is utilised so pupils can build on previous foundations, rather than starting again.

Each topic has a focus on chronology to allow children to explore the place in time of the period they are studying and make comparisons in other parts of the world. 

• In EYFS, children explore the concept of history by reflecting on key experiences from their own past, helping them understand that they each have their own histories.  Then, they engage in activities to compare and contrast characters from stories, including historical figures, deepening their understanding of how individual lives fit into broader historical narratives. 
• Children will further develop their awareness of the past in KS1 and will know where people and events fit chronologically. 
• This will support children in building a mental timeline they can refer to throughout their learning in KS2 and identifying connections, contrasts and trends over time.