At Holy Family, we place great value on Humanities as being the foundation upon which children base their understanding of the wider world. The fantastic range of skills, learning opportunities and meaningful cross curricular links that it provides alights the children’s curiosity and engagement.

Intent

At Holy Family, we aim to inspire pupils’ curiosity, equip them to ask and answer insightful questions and develop a love for the discipline of history. Our teachers seek to deliver an excellent history provision through engaging lessons, a diverse curriculum and the examination of artefacts and historical sources. Our curriculum is then supplemented through a wider range of enrichment opportunities including workshops, Forest School and educational visits. 

History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time. Through the teaching of history, our children gain a deeper, coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Our history curriculum is also intrinsically linked to our surrounding area and thereby enables our pupils to develop their knowledge of local history and of our community.

Implementation

Our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) develop their Understanding of the World by covering aspects of the curriculum through Past and Present, People, culture and communities and The Natural World.

In Key Stage 1 and 2, the history curriculum is taught through cross curricular topics and specific history lessons. We believe strongly that studying history is about exploration and that our children learn better when they are encouraged to use their imagination and apply their learning in engaging, meaningful contexts. Our history curriculum aims to equip our pupils with highly-transferable skills including the ability to communicate effectively, to research and to discuss challenging topics. Wherever possible, links are made between other subject areas including literacy, ICT, science, RE and Geography.

Through a carefully sequenced body of historical skills and knowledge, key concepts are taught and then developed across across year groups to ensure subject depth, coherence and progression. The Curriculum is ambitious for all learners and children are given ample opportunities to embed knowledge and master new skills in a range of contexts. When our pupils leave in Year 6, they should have a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history. They should be able to identify connections, contrasts and trends over time using appropriate historical terms and construct informed responses through the thoughtful selection and organisation of relevant historical information.

“On our Roman day our visiting Roman was showing us all of the countries in the Roman Empire. They conquered lots of places! The Roman Empire was super strong and destroyed nearly every country. The man showed us his equipment, armour and weapons. A few minutes later he talked to us about how you pull an arrow from your body, throw a spear and what the battle formations looked like.”