History
At Sutton Veny, we aim to inspire the children to become thoughtful and inquisitive historians who have the courage to be reflective about sources of evidence and justify their opinions based on the new knowledge they acquire. We hope to motivate them to compare and contrast the historical periods covered and think about the impact that history has had on our ideas today. Fostering empathy for others is one of the key skills taught throughout the topics covered and developed through the use of our key concepts outlined in the knowledge organisers for each year group. In addition to this, we allow the children to embrace the past through school trips and themed days, which sparks enjoyment from the children and ignites curiosity about the topics they have covered.
We ensure that the curriculum is broad, balanced and enables the children to gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Much of the work in History is of a practical nature and the children are given every opportunity to develop the skills to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments and develop their own perspective and judgements about the time periods looked at.
Within Key Stage One, the children should develop an awareness of time and be able to fit the periods they have studied into a wider chronology. This is supported at Sutton Veny by the use of a timeline in classrooms which is used by class teachers to discuss where historical periods sit and especially useful when looking at events beyond living memory. They cover the following topics: Old and New, Dinosaurs, Family History, Sutton Veny, Up, Up and Away, Castles, The Great Fire of London, Florence Nightingale and The Railways.
Within Key Stage Two, the children secure their understanding of British, local and world history whilst also fitting the periods they cover into the wider chronology of the of world. They use historical sources (both primary and secondary) to enable them to describe time periods and construct questions about them. They cover the following topics: Stone Age, Iron Age, WW1, The Roman Empire, The Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Greece, WW2, Tudors and Mesoamerica.
To find out more about the current topic each year group is studying, please visit each class page.
All of our history topics are organised around a key question and set of vocabulary that the children access in order to understand the topics they cover. This enables the topic to remain focused and centred on the key knowledge that the children need to understand. In addition, all of the key vocabulary is displayed in the children’s classrooms to support them to use this language within their own work. Furthermore, each of the learning objectives are fronted by words found within Bloom’s Taxonomy, which allow the children to develop skills that they can use for life. For example, compare and contrast, justify, evaluate assess and argue. Moreover, by the time that the children leave in Year 6, we look to ensure that the children are able to ask historical questions, evaluate sources of evidence and weigh up the evidence they’ve gained to form a judgement or answer a question.