The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.
Theodore Roosevelt.
HISTORY
We aim for a high-quality curriculum, fulfilling the requirements of the National Curriculum for history utilising the Cornerstones Curriculum 2022 to provide a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum that encompasses British Values throughout and ensuring the progressive development of historical concepts, knowledge and skills. We shape our History curriculum to ensure it is fully inclusive to every child.
Our teaching allows the children to investigate and interpret the past, to understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s past as well as that of the wider world, and to be able to communicate historically.
We aim for the children to know and understand about significant aspects of the history of the wider world like ancient civilisations and empires; changes in living memory and beyond living memory; to learn about the lives of significant people of the past; understand the methods of historical enquiry and be able to ask and answer high quality questions.
We want the children to gain the ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources. We want children to enjoy and embed a desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake quality research across a range of history topics, fieldwork and educational visits.
Intent
At Padstow School, we strive to develop young historians who are enthused to investigate, learn and interpret the past both locally and worldwide. Children are given plentiful opportunities to engage with the local history of both Cornwall and Britain, as well as explore ancient civilisations from around the world. We actively encourage children to desire to learn more about the history of their locality and the impact historical events and eras had upon the area.
Through a carefully planned curriculum, high quality resources and teaching, and a consistent approach across the school, we develop the following characteristics of historians:
• An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain and Cornwall’s past
• Learning about the concept of chronology, which underpins children's developing sense of period, as well as key concepts such as cause, change and effect.
• The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences in both verbal and written form.
• The ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources.
• The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
• A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning.
• A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.
• A developing sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
Implementation
Padstow School uses the Cornerstones curriculum because the history projects are well sequenced to provide a coherent subject scheme that develops children’s historical knowledge, skills and subject disciplines. Key aspects and concepts, such as chronology, cause and effect, similarity and difference, significance and hierarchy, are revisited throughout all projects and are developed over time. All projects also develop historical skills based on evidence and historical enquiry. The choice of historical periods follows the guidance set out in the National Curriculum, with specific details relating to significant events and individuals chosen to present a rich and diverse account of British and world history.
The school has a school-wide agreed ‘Key question’ terminology that is focused on widening children’s historical knowledge through critical thinking.
Where there are opportunities for making meaningful connections with other projects, history projects are sequenced accordingly. For example, the project Dynamic Dynasties is taught alongside the art and design project Taotie to give children a better all-round understanding of ancient Chinese arts and culture.
All history projects are taught in the autumn and summer terms, with opportunities for schools to revisit historical concepts in some of the spring term geography projects.
Throughout the history scheme, there is complete coverage of all national curriculum programmes of study.
