History
"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."
Marcus Garvey
At Mossgate Primary School we want to envelope our children in a rich history education that excites them and eager to know more about Britain’s past and the wider world. From EYFS to Y6, we have carefully sequenced our curriculum to ensure children study significant events, people and historical periods, which will develop their understanding of how civilisations have changed, how they are different and the connections between them.
We aim to develop historians who can:
- ask meaningful and open-ended questions;
- think critically when considering sources and arguments;
- make connections and compare;
- develop perspective and judgement.
Our substantive concepts of leadership, migration, childhood and civilisation, have been selected carefully to ensure connections are made within and across year groups.
- Leadership allows children to base their learning on their own experiences of a leader within school and moves onto significant leaders from various points in history.
- Migration emphasises the diversity of society and helps children understand that people have been migrating for thousands of years and for many different purposes.
- Childhood allows our children to empathise with children of their own age who lived in very different circumstances.
- Civilisation enables our children to understand different types of civilisations from the school community to Ancient Greece, Baghdad and beyond.
We develop children’s disciplinary thinking through our disciplinary concepts which are mapped through our history curriculum. These are:
- Cause
- Consequence
- Change and continuity
- Similarity and difference
- Historical significance
- Sources and evidence
- Historical interpretations
Across the infants, children develop their understanding of their own identity through the history of their families and the local area of Heysham and Morecambe. In the juniors, children learn about Lancaster’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and make local links to other periods studied. Focusing on the history of the local area, gives our children a sense of pride and belonging and helps them understand how the past influences how we live today.
Throughout the year, we aim to bring passionate historians into school to inspire and share their expertise with the children and staff. Providing workshops that link to the teaching and learning already taking place.
History books allow children to record their learning in a range of ways such asking historically valid questions, creating their own structured accounts and written narratives, analysing sources of evidence, making judgments, and so on. The photographs below demonstrate examples of good historical learning in history books across the school.
In order to ensure the teaching of history is to a high standard, the subject leader works closely with class teachers during the planning and the teaching of the units when support is needed, history books are reviewed in conjunction with planning, discussions with staff and pupil interviews.
Our history curriculum is currently a focus in our School Improvement Plan for 2023 - 2026. We are developing our key learning with a focus on our substantive and disciplinary concepts and once these have been finalised, we will upload them to our website.
Hannah Wannop - History Subject Leader