History

 History at St Matthew’s

Friendship, Discovery, Prayer

Intent

At St. Matthew’s we shape our history curriculum to ensure it is fully inclusive for all children.  Our aims are to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum for History; providing a broad, balanced and relevant curriculum that encompasses the British Values throughout, ensuring there is a progressive development of historical skills, knowledge and concepts while endeavouring to provide a wide range of diverse perspectives.

We foster a love of history as a subject, as well as ensuring they leave St. Matthew’s with the knowledge and skills to support success in their next stage in education.

Implementation

At St Matthew’s we teach a high quality history curriculum, inspiring in our pupils a curiosity and passion about the past of Britain as well as that of the wider world.

Our teaching equips pupils with knowledge about the foundations of the British people and how their discoveries and development has influenced and been influenced by the rest of the world, to know and understand about significant aspects of the history of ancient civilisations and empires, as well as changes in our own living memory and those beyond.

We also provide our pupils opportunities to make discoveries about the lives of significant people of the past, including diverse figures and the achievements of significant women. We help the pupils access a range of methods of historical enquiry, allowing them to ask and answer questions, forming opinions supported by a variety of sources, and (when appropriate) to think critically about their relevance and possible biases.

History is taught as part of a termly topic. Individual topics will contain more historical context than others, and history will be taught alongside geography.

At St. Matthew’s history is taught to promote historical skills as well as access to historical knowledge and facts. This is implemented in a variety of ways; a diverse curriculum, varied lesson forms, encouragement of questioning within lessons, as well as a wide variety of trips and experiences across all key stages.  This contextualises learning and increases the cultural capital of the children we educate.

 Impact

Outcomes in the children's topic books and displays evidence of a broad and balanced history curriculum and demonstrates the children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge.

Throughout active learning  pupils ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift and sort arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.  History teaching, including residential trips, provide further relevant and contextual learning, engaging members of the community in children’s learning and providing positive role models from the community for children to learn from.

Please click here to see the History Progression map.