Contact Details
- 01622871270
- office@laddingford.kent.sch.uk
Darman Lane, Laddingford, Maidstone, Kent ME18 6BL
Laddingford St Mary's
C of E Primary School
Making the past
NOTE: We teach two History and two Geography topics each year on an alternating basis. These topics are organised to maximise cross-curricular learning due to the close links between the two subjects.
Intent
At Laddingford, our vision is History taught as a narrative subject that helps children develop strong chronologies of cause and effect, explore ‘Big Ideas’ across diverse topics and develop their critical and analytical skills as historians, interpreting textual and archaeological sources. History is not just ‘learning about the past’ but also understanding how we learn about and interpret the past. History, to some extent, is about constructing the past. It should be taught with a strong focus on the scientific method of discovering and evaluating evidence to support theories so they learn to interrogate historical narratives. We shy away from simple explanations and instead offer children a range of interpretations to demonstrate the richness and difficulty of history. Each unit introduces three ‘Big Ideas’ - themes that can be traced through other units, helping children develop the vocabulary to discuss history, connect the topics they study and reflect on the universals of ‘the human condition’ that the subject can illuminate.
Implementation
We have developed our own scheme for teaching history, drawing on our staff’s extensive subject knowledge and research over the last several years. This scheme engages with primary and secondary sources to give children an academically up-to-date view of the topic they’re studying. We also try and stay on top of new evidence and breakthroughs as they are discovered and help children to understand the significance of them.
From the National Curriculum, we have identified the major skills of History that carry across from the Early Learning Goals to Key Stages 1 and 2. These are:
Chronology – Historians organise people, places and events based on when they happened, in time order.
Narrative history – Historians explain how people, places and events are connected through cause and effect and tell these stories.
Compare and contrast – Historians explain how people, places and events are similar or different to one another.
Historical enquiry – Historians ask questions about the past.
Evidence – Historians answer their questions about the past by searching for a range of evidence (sources).
Interpretation – Historians select and use evidence and their own reasoning to answer their questions about the past. The evidence they choose and their own beliefs and views might mean that two historians draw different conclusions about the same question.
Vocabulary – Historians use particular words and phrases to talk about the past.
To understand these key historical skills, in Key Stage 1, children study four topics:
In Key Stage 2, we begin to teach British History as a continuous story:
Our other units of History focus on providing comparison and contrast to our units on Britain:
In EYFS, we’ve left the Past and Present teaching flexible so that our skilled, early years practitioners can pursue children’s emerging historical interests.
This scheme has meant a huge commitment from staff to share and improve their subject knowledge and, along with Geography, is still undergoing development and review. We aim to provide a rich range of activities in lessons that help children to process and remember these stories, demonstrating their growing historical skills.
SEND and vulnerable pupils
Given our intense focus on writing during English, we make it our aim to give children options about how to record their learning in History and Geography lessons. Many of them choose to write but, for those who find it a challenge, we don’t want that to become a barrier to them engaging with these fascinating subjects. As a result, children’s work in History and Geography may look different as they opt for different ways of recording their learning. The use of clear, yet layered, narratives through our topics also aids with comprehension and cohesion of learning for all. We firmly believe that pedagogy to support less able children is ultimately helpful to all children.
Impact
The impact of our history curriculum has been that children have a greater ability to recall the key events, sites and figures of the periods they have studied. Children are also developing a coherent, continuous and chronological view of British history and are able to connect the time periods that they’ve studied to one another. They can also make links between British and non-British history, examining common themes made explicit in our ‘Big Ideas’. We have had great feedback from children and parents around enjoyment and the depth of learning they have seen around the topics in class.
Our current research project uses Google Forms to quiz children on a week-by-week basis to see how well they retain key information as the topic progresses. Our hope is that, by teaching in a logical sequence and recapping previous learning, we can maximise the retention of key facts across the topic’s duration.
Darman Lane, Laddingford, Maidstone, Kent ME18 6BL