History

History education at Newton Bluecoat will help our pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We aim to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past and for our pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.

Aims

We aim to ensure that all pupils:

• know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
• know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind
• gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
• understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
• understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
• gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales

In Key Stage 1 our pupils will study: changes within living memory; events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally; the lives of significant individuals; significant historical events; people and places in their own locality.

In Key Stage 2 our pupils will be study: changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age; the Roman Empire in Britain; Britain’s settlement by Anglo-Saxons & Scots; Anglo-Saxon struggle for the Kingdom of England; local history; a theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066; Ancient Egypt; Ancient Greece; the Islamic civilization.

The History Subject Leader is Miss Harriet Watson

National Curriculum

Key Learning Objectives : History