History

Curriculum

At Rivers Primary Academy we aim to provide a history curriculum that is creative, inclusive, challenging and inspired by the real-world. It inspires future thinkers, innovators and problem solvers in an immersive environment that stimulates curiosity and supports high-quality learning, allowing each and every learner to fulfil their potential.

Our history curriculum is divided into five areas:

• chronological understanding;
• knowledge and understanding of events, people and changes in the past;
• historical interpretation;
• historical enquiry;
• organisation and communication.

It 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 international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales. 

Programme of Study

Our programme of study for history was developed internally and it clearly sets out what will be taught and learnt at each point in the year for all year groups, including a range of famous historians. Although this bespoke programme of study is the 'spine' of our history curriculum, as it sets out the essential knowledge and skills that pupils must be taught and learn, teachers have the autonomy to make their own judgement as to the best way to achieve this and they enrich the content with a range of high-quality resources from a range of different sources.

Assessment

During the teaching of each curriculum objective, children’s subject knowledge is application of this is assessed using formative evaluation by their class teacher on a lesson-by-lesson basis. Teachers consider the objectives covered during each session and the end-goal that is to be achieved; in doing so, they will then make judgements that are subsequently used to inform future teaching based on the children’s competencies relating to the aspect of history being learnt or explored.

Examples of this type of assessment include:

• evaluation of pupils’ written work;
• evaluation of pupils’ verbal responses to questioning;
• low stake quizzing;
• structuring tasks and questions to enable the identification of knowledge gaps and misconceptions;
• discussion between individual children and teacher observation.

At the end of each unit of learning, teachers then make a summative judgement relating to each child’s knowledge and understanding of the historical context explored in line with the objectives set out in the National Curriculum. This information is recorded online, allowing leaders to track and monitor the progress and attainment of individuals as they make their way through the school.