History
Our History Subject Leader is Mrs D Milburn
At Brandon Primary Academy, we recognise the vital role History has on a child’s ability to ask perceptive questions, think critically, justify using evidence and to consider both sides of an argument before making decisions. We want our children to begin to develop a sense of identity through learning about the past and to know how history has shaped their own lives. We aim to reflect the local industrial heritage of the Brandon / Central Durham area through studying the impact of the coal mines and transport on the local area to ensure children understand how the area in which they live was shaped and formed but also how it has changed over time.
We want the History curriculum to support and develop this through helping our children understand the complexities of people, societies and change, enabling them to understand their identity within society. We aim to show them models of good and responsible citizenship; right and wrong, morals and ethics linking in to our whole school values of Believe, Achieve, Succeed and Inspire.
Our History curriculum is designed to recognise children’s prior learning and starting points, provide them with role models to develop positive relationships, provide first hand learning experiences and equip them with the skills to develop speaking and listening to access the wider curriculum building resilience and developing a love of learning. This links with our whole school priorities in relation to developing communication and language. By its very nature history encourages children to ask questions about the past and discuss and debate their findings developing language skills within the context of their historical understanding.
We believe that high-quality history lessons inspire children to want to know more about the past and to think and act as historians. By linking learning to a range of topics, children have opportunities to investigate and interpret the past, understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s past as well as that of the wider world, and to be able to communicate historically. Through History pupils will see the diversity of human experience and understand more about themselves as individuals and members of society. What they learn can influence their decisions about personal choices, attitudes and values.
We aim to develop children with the following essential characteristics to help them become historians:
- An understanding of society and their place within it, so that they acquire a sense of their cultural heritage
- An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past as well as that of the wider world linking these to the local area where appropriate.
- A chronological understanding of historical periods
- The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences
- use historical terms accurately in their effective communication of ideas and judgements.
- The ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources
- The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry
- A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning
- A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics
- A developing sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
All children have the opportunity to take part in educational visits linked to History in each Key Stage. This is linked to the program of enrichment opportunities to contextualise learning and enhance cultural capital which runs across our curriculum.
The EYFS framework is structured very differently to the national curriculum as it is organised across seven areas of learning rather than subject areas. The most relevant statements for History are taken from the following areas of learning:
- Communication and language
- Personal Development
- Knowledge and understanding of the World
Within our EYFS, children’s History skills are challenged through ongoing levelled continuous provision and targeted implicit and explicit challenges linked to the EYFS framework. We start with children’s simple understanding of the passing of time e.g. before/after, now/next and this is built and developed upon.
