Intent
At Carnforth School it is our intent that the History element of our curriculum will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world and inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. As our pupils progress, they will become equipped to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. We want pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups. We want them to begin to reflect on their own identity and be able to talk about how we know about the past and how we develop our understanding about the past.
At Carnforth, it is our intent to build a History curriculum which develops learning and encourages children to act like historians looking at the past and sources that tell us about the past in a critical manner evaluating evidence and opinion confidently and accurately.
At Carnforth School, our children will be able to conduct historical enquiry using a variety of sources and or artefacts, interpreting their findings and communicating their historical knowledge and understanding appropriately.
At Carnforth school, language is integral to the development and progress of historical knowledge; we will give children the language to explain and justify their findings in a coherent manner and debate demonstrating their knowledge and understanding of the subject. Our curriculum will provide opportunities to use their skills in reading to further unlock the curriculum.
We want children to aim high and understand the opportunities the future could hold for them as historians. We want children to be inspired to be curators, archaeologists, researchers, archivists and historical writers.
Implementation
The importance of high-quality teaching in history is important at Carnforth School. Each term, the school focusses on a different strand of the curriculum and this is taught in every year group.
Before each unit, staff receive training in the strand and are supported with planning their unit of work by the curriculum lead as well as planning collaboratively with other staff across the Black Pear Trust. When planning, class teachers use the National Curriculum as well as the History Subject Syllabus document which outlines the progression for each year group. This includes ‘What an expected child in history looks like’ which was created in collaboration across the trust and is used as an assessment tool when evaluating the progress of children.
There are high expectations of pupils ‘talking’ like a historian as well as high expectation of pupils researching, interpreting and presenting like a historian. Each history topic will be inquiry-based fully involving the children as well as high quality teacher modelling and questioning with a mix of individual, paired and group instruction.