History

At Corton Primary School & Nursery, our young historians will gain a deep, well-rounded and chronologically coherent understanding of local, national and internationally significant periods, events and historical aspects. Our children will leave us knowing how a historian works and feeling inspired and curious to discover more.

We will support our children to do this by building awareness of both their own heritage and that of the wider world, reinforcing our Christian values of respect, kindness and integrity. We will equip them with the essential disciplinary skills that can be used and applied within meaningful historical enquiry. 

Curriculum

We will deliver an ambitious, motivating and knowledge-rich curriculum that:

• Gives children a deep chronological understanding of the UK and the local area, including its interactions with the wider world.
• Systematically develops a wide and deep understanding of historical substantive concepts, such as invasion, trade and power.
• Exposes children to significant ancient civilisations, empires and non-European societies.
• Draws connections between different aspects of local, national and international history.
• Uses timelines to support organisation of substantive knowledge of key events and time periods.
• Develops the disciplinary knowledge essential to developing historical understanding, including knowledge of the process of historical enquiry, understanding cause and consequence, understanding that different versions of the past exist and using a variety of historical sources of evidence.

Progression of knowledge

This process of knowledge acquisition begins in Nursery with the children beginning to make sense of their own life-story and their family’s history. Reception children, under the Early Learning Goal of Understanding the World (Past and Present), learn the concepts of past and present primarily by drawing on their own experiences and through storytelling.  

Children in Key Stage 1 study a range of significant individuals from the past who have contributed to national and local achievements. This learning is undertaken whilst children also build knowledge of substantive concepts and slowly enrich their chronological schema. Children learn to ask questions, use different sources and begin to understand that the past can be represented in different ways.

In Key Stage 2, children’s chronological frameworks are further developed at a local, national and international level. Whilst developing this wider chronological understanding of history, our children build and add to timelines through the year groups to ensure they can reference and refer to events from prior learning. Disciplinary knowledge also continues to be systematically developed accordingly, in tandem with this substantive knowledge.

Local history is essential, as it enables us to focus on a particular area and to move from the ‘local’ to the ‘national’ and often onto the ‘global’ scene. Thus, it can be the most appropriate access point for the study of history and for appreciating our rich cultural heritage. As such, local history is embedded into our KS1 and KS2 curriculum.

Please click here to view the History progression document for Early Years.

history vision.pdf