Mrs Cartwright - History Leader

"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots." - Marcus Garvey

Developing a love for learning in History is crucial and we do this, by inspiring curiosity and providing children with the essential skills and knowledge to build upon and prepare them for the next stage.

Mesne Lea aims to inspire inquisitiveness and interest about the past and the wider world, whilst developing coherent chronological knowledge and an enquiring mind. Our teaching of chronology, helps to develop a sense of identity and a cultural understanding, based on their historical heritage. This enables our children to learn to value their own and other people’s cultures in modern multi-cultural Britain. We aim to provide the children with a rich and diverse history curriculum, equipping them with a coherent knowledge and understanding. Local history is threaded throughout our history curriculum and we want our children to develop an appreciation for the people and events that are part of our local and national history.

Our curriculum is well- considered and structured, provides literacy-rich, cross-curricular opportunities and ensures progression and depth in learning.

Each topic has been carefully selected and designed, with the key knowledge and skills identified and mapped out to ensure clear progression across the topics and a depth of learning. The curriculum is designed to ensure that there is always a balance between new content and the development of key subject skills and outcomes.

EYFS

History is integral to the Early Learning Goal of Understanding the World where pupils are encouraged and supported to “talk about past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of family members”. In addition pupils “learn about similarities and differences” in relation to “objects” and “talk about changes” they observe.  Our curriculum begins focusing on the key theme of significant events with a focus of exploring the changes to living memory, that the children can observe or have experienced, linking this to the lives of those around them and celebrating similarities and differences that are observed.

Key Stage 1

Pupils continue to develop the key skills, knowledge and principals of working as a historian. Building upon the outcomes achieved by the EYFS, the children consolidate their knowledge of changes within their living memory, but begin to explore similarities and differences between themselves and the lives and places that are significant to their world. This progresses further allowing children to develop a wider historical understanding of events and people who are significant in History, beyond their living memory, then bringing this altogether by exploring significant people, places and events in their own local area of Prestolee.  Children also begin to learn some of the ways in which we find out about the past and how events studied fit into the chronological framework.

Key Stage 2

The children begin to explore the earliest historical recordings of civilisations, and then move progressively through time, finally exploring the history of modern Britain. The curriculum is designed to build on what has already been achieved at EYFS and Key Stage 1 particularly continuing to develop a sense of chronology and identify connections, contrasts and historical trends over time in relation to the people and events that they investigate. Children will use an increasingly sophisticated and specialised subject vocabulary and select and organise information from historical sources, understanding that different versions of the past may exist and provide explanations for why some people and events in the past may be considered more historically significant than others.

Our History curriculum allows teachers to promote the values of SMSC and British Values through the teaching and learning of democracy, tolerance and respect through the topics selected and the key concepts the children are exposed to. 

Through the breadth and depth that our curriculum offers, our children become passionate historians, who are inspired by their topics, are curious to find out more about the past and have a love of history and a thirst that will motivate them to develop their knowledge for the rest of their lives.