Intent

At Thorpe Lea Primary School, our intent is to inspire children’s natural curiosity to engage them in thinking and learning about the past.   Our History curriculum enables our children to become critical thinkers about the past, to ask and answer questions through evidence based enquiries and to understand how learning about the past can help to change the future.  We aim to develop our children’s inquisitive minds, giving them everlasting memories to help them develop a love of history.

Implementation

These skills are taught using a range of teaching styles to ensure that the children are engaged and motivated.  They are encouraged to be free thinkers, to work collaboratively, to use a range of enquiry skills, to make links with their prior learning, to ask questions and to conduct their own research.

The History curriculum is designed to ensure that it provides the progression and coverage that meets the needs of pupils across the school.  It is planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has already been taught. 

In the EYFS, children are provided with experiences which enable them to develop skills of enquiry and to explore their own learning. By providing the children with the opportunity to discuss the changes in their own lives and the lives of others, we set the foundations of chronology. This stimulates the children’s curiosity to learn about lives beyond living memory. This is taught under the specific area of Understanding the World. 

In Years 1 and 2 the foundations developed in the Early Years are built upon and developed.  The children are provided with experiences to improve their understanding of how past events have influenced life as they know it today.  They learn about events which are significant nationally and globally and how the achievements of individuals has had a significant impact on people in the past and present day.

Impact

The teaching and learning at Thorpe Lea is evaluated by learning walks, moderation sessions, pupil interviews, staff interviews, staff INSET and work scrutinies.

At Thorpe Lea Primary School, it is our aim that all children will achieve age related expectations in History.  We intend to embed key concepts in the children’s long term memory and apply them across the curriculum.