History

History at Booker

Pupils at Booker Avenue have always been highly engaged in their history lessons. Our current history curriculum aims to continue this tradition and to ignite the curiosity of all the school’s pupils towards learning about the past. It aims to engage pupils by providing real experiences, both inside and outside of the classroom, and is set out to use the incredible resources available in our city, to make learning as relevant as possible for the pupils. Outlined below is the key knowledge and skills that our curriculum intends to teach our pupils. 

Key knowledge

The history curriculum has been designed to give pupils at Booker a bank of key knowledge about the past and present:

Chronology

By the end of their time at Booker, pupils will have developed a chronological understanding of British history from the Stone Age to the present day. They will recognise which time periods were earlier or later than one another and will appreciate that some civilisations existed at the same time as one another. They will understand what AD and BC mean. They will know the key dates that the main world time periods started and ended. 

Civilisations and empires

Pupils will know the meaning of the terms civilisation, empire, conquer, invader and settler. Pupils will have studied a number of world civilisations and will recognise the natural resources that early civilisations needed to be successful, a topic which links closely to our geography curriculum. They will know why some civilisations wanted to conquer other countries and will develop an opinion about whether the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings were settlers or invaders.

Democracy, equality and society

Pupils will have studied and compared politics and social order across a range of different civilisations, deepening their understanding of democracy and equality, two values that are very important to us as a school. By studying a range of different cultures, they will also continue to celebrate cultural diversity, which fits in well with our school values and another one of our key curriculum drivers: respect. They will also recognise that some civilisations were successful as people worked closely as a community; community is very important to our school.

Technological advances

Pupils will have studied a range of technological advances and will recognise how key historical technological developments are still benefiting our lives today.

Inspirational individuals

Pupils will celebrate the achievements of inspirational individuals from history, something which we do throughout our curriculum in order to instil a desire to succeed within our pupils.

How religion, transport, medicine, homes,  food and clothing have changed over time

By year 6, our pupils will have compared the lives of the people who lived in different civilisations and will have questioned how their life today compares to those of the people living in the past; they will have studied changes in religion, homes, food, clothing, medicine and transport in particular detail. Every opportunity is taken to link these core topics to our RE, art, DT and geography topics. 

Vocabulary

Pupils will know the meaning of a range of history-specific vocabulary and will use it accurately in context. 

Key skills

There are a number of key skills that pupils will develop during their time at Booker, in order to allow them to learn how to act as historians:

• Children will learn to perform enquiries and to question interpretations of the past: they will know how to ask perceptive questions, think critically, interrogate sources and artefacts, weigh evidence, sift through arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.
• They will learn how to present historical information in a detailed way, both verbally and in writing.
• They will know how to interact with and create timelines, as well as having the ability to answer questions about sequence, intervals and duration. 

Implementation

History is taught once a week, either by the class teacher or by a PPA teacher. Topics last for a half term. An assessment piece is completed at the end of each half term to inform teacher judgements.  

From September 2021 Years Three, Four and Five are following the Opening Worlds Curriculum which is a Humanities approach. The History curriculum being taught; alongside RE and Geography; and its associated teaching approaches methods will secure the highest possible quality of education for our pupils. Scope, rigour, coherence and sequencing will ensure that the subject properly reflects the academic practices, outside of school, to which the subject refers and they make certain that this is organised in the best way that allows pupils to make progress, thrive and enjoy History.

You can look at our curriculm in the document below. There is a strong emphasis on the links between the humanities subjects and a stress on using the correct vocabulary. 

Year Six are continuing with their curriculum until the new resources are available in 2023.

Impact

The vast majority of pupils consistently achieve their learning objective within lessons and are assessed as being at expected standard for history. Some pupils are working at greater depth standard. Pupils seem to really enjoy history. The comments below are taken from a pupil voice survey completed in December 2019:

“I love history because we learn so much about the past and about what life was like for our ancestors.”  Year 3 pupil.

 “I love how my teacher helps me to learn how to be a good historian.”  Year 3 pupil.

“I love history at Booker because I learn lots of new facts and skills and have fun while I am doing it.” Year 5 pupil. 

 “I love it when we create our own museum displays by researching like real historians.” Year 5 pupil.

“I like it when we ask our own questions and research the answers because this helps us to learn things that we didn’t know before”  Year 6 pupil.

The documents below gives detail about the content the pupils will cover in each topic for each half term per year group.

The document below lists the historical key skills that the children will work on developing during upper school.

The documents below contain the key historical vocabulary that we are aiming to teach the children in upper school.

Should you have any questions about history at Booker, please do not hesitate to contact me through the school office.

Mr Thomas 

History Curriculum Leader