Petts Hill Primary School

Petts Hill
Primary School

History

Our ambition for every learner:

At Petts Hill Primary, 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.

We develop children with the following essential characteristics to help them become historians:

  • An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past;
  • Learning about the concept of chronology, which underpins children's developing sense of period, as well as key concepts such as change and causation.
  • The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences;
  • 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.

What we do to achieve these ambitions:   

The curriculum is planned as part of our bespoke curriculum for our school community. It includes:

  • A knowledge organiser which outlines knowledge (including vocabulary, key diagrams, dates & people) all children must master
  • A cycle of lessons for each subject, which carefully plans for progression and depth
  • Many opportunities for hands on learning to support long term memory through first hand observations and sensory stimulus
  • Many opportunities for children to make their own decisions and drawing their own conclusions using vocabulary in full sentences and relevant terms
  • Many opportunities for children to link their learning to the other curriculum areas in that term
  • Many opportunities to read, write and practise maths through science
  • Retrieval grids for every topic that are used regularly to support learners’ ability to recap key concepts and facts; increase space in the working memory and link what’s previously been taught and what comes next
  • Challenge questions for pupils to apply their learning in a philosophical/open manner
  • Trips and visits from experts who will enhance the learning experience.

 How we measure our success: 

Our History Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: 

  • A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes
  • A celebration of learning for each term which demonstrates progression across the school;
  • using retrieval grids to check long term memory application
  • using knowledge organisers to check back on what the children have learned and how they recall and explain vocabulary, facts
  • Pupil discussions about their learning using the class learning journey boards and their books as visual aids

For more information on the programmes of study for History click below:

 Programmes of study History