Aims

History surrounds us and provides a framework for children to understand their world and develop their identities. At Victoria Road Primary School, we aim to teach children how past events have shaped modern society.

We are committed to incorporating local history throughout our curriculum, tailoring it to the unique needs and interests of our pupils. This approach enables us to make meaningful connections to our community's rich heritage, such as exploring Ashford's Saxon roots and our school's own Victorian history.

Our goal is to ignite children's historical curiosity and bring the past to life through creative expression like drama, dance, and music. We encourage students to question, analyse evidence, debate ideas, and develop their own perspectives and critical thinking skills. By teaching history, we strive to foster an understanding of diverse lives – past and present – the dynamics of change, and the richness of different societies and beliefs.

Our Key Stage 1 history curriculum allows children to develop an understanding and appreciation of events and people from their own lifetime and their grandparents' time.

In Key Stage 2, the curriculum is designed to provide children with a chronological understanding of history. Students in Years 3-6 study core British history units from the National Curriculum, progressing from the Stone Age to the Iron Age in Year 3 to World War II in Year 6. A similar chronological approach is applied to ancient history, beginning with Ancient Egypt in Year 3, followed by Ancient Greece in Year 5, and the Mayan civilisation in Year 6. This structure aims to foster a strong sense of time, highlight the interconnectedness of civilisations, and expose students to a diverse array of historical subjects.

Implementation

Our history curriculum uses an enquiry-based approach. Each unit is framed around a central historical question designed to spark children's curiosity, encourage discovery, and promote independent questioning.

Our school uses the Challenge Curriculum from Focus Education as a framework, but we tailor each unit to meet the needs of our students. Each unit begins by connecting new learning to prior knowledge and experiences, asking students to share what they already know about the topic. From there, the learning journey unfolds through a carefully sequenced series of key concepts and skills, building on students' existing understanding. Our units are structured around a learning cycle: "Link it," "Learn it," "Check it," "Show it," and "Know it" (Make it stick). This cycle ensures students connect new material to prior knowledge ("Link it"), acquire essential new information ("Learn it"), demonstrate their comprehension ("Check it"), showcase their skills ("Show it"), and, through repeated practice and review, solidify their understanding, leading to lasting knowledge retention ("Know it"). The goal is for students to build upon existing knowledge, mastering new concepts and remembering them long after the unit is complete.

We provide students with key vocabulary for each unit and encourage them to use it in their discussions and written work.  Historical sources enable students to further develop their knowledge and explore related ideas.

To make history lessons more engaging and memorable, we use hands-on activities and practical exercises that encourage students to draw their own conclusions. We also promote diverse presentation methods, allowing students to showcase their findings and learning in creative and impactful ways.

To strengthen long-term memory and integrate prior knowledge with new skills, we provide frequent opportunities throughout the term for students to revisit and recall previously learnt material. Our lessons and resources are designed to consolidate existing skills and build upon prior knowledge while simultaneously introducing new concepts and challenges.

Impact

The impact of history teaching will be assessed in a variety of ways, e.g. pupil voice, books and retrieval practice to ensure that children have met and understood the expectations for each unit they have covered. Through high quality teaching, our children will develop a good understanding of historical concepts and knowledge.

By the time children leave our school, our aim is that they should have developed:

•  A secure knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from the historical period covered. 
• The ability to think critically about history and communicate confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences. 
• The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate from the past, forming and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
• Curiosity and enthusiastic engagement in their learning.
• A respect for historical evidence and the ability to critically evaluate the use of it to support their explanations and judgements.
• A desire to embrace challenging activities, showing resilience and confidence across a range of historical topics.

History Curriculum Overview