“The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.”  - Theodore Roosevelt.

Lead Historian: Rachel Chevassut

Intent:

At Christchurch Infants we believe that children should be inspired and curious to learn about, understand and appreciate aspects of the past, change over time and different people’s lives to help equip them for living in their society now and moving into their futures. As with CCI’s Geography Intent, we aim to ’equip pupils with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life’ (School inspection handbook 2019, updated 2021) by providing our pupils with a varied, fascinating and relevant range of experiences and challenges to allow pupils to develop these essential skills, knowledge and understanding as outlined by the National Curriculum.

We aim to ensure that every child sees themselves as a historian, being curious about people, communities and cultures of the past in their locality, in Britain and some of the wider world. We aim for children to be able to make links about what they learn with their own lives and seeing how it impacts them today and in the future.

Our intent is that children will be able to understand how the past and change over time is relevant to them, reflecting on what they have learnt and making meaningful links to their own lives. They will start to use the skills of asking questions, thinking critically and weighing up evidence amongst others in the National Curriculum as they learn about people’s lives, change and significant people and events in the past.

Children will explore and discover a variety of historical skills, knowledge and understanding through our cross-curricular enquiry based curriculum and will be eager and curious to learn more and further develop their love of learning as historians.

Implementation:

‘Being a historian’ is integrated into our curriculum through Curious-city - An enquiry-led, local learning approach to the National Curriculum 2014. 

The National Curriculum objectives will all be covered through the enquiry-led approach and will ensure that children develop skills of:

• Historical interpretation
• Historical investigation/enquiry
• Chronological understanding
• Knowledge and understanding of events, people and changes in the past.
• Presenting, using and communicating their understanding, including using historical vocabulary.

Children will be taught about changes within living memory, significant national or global events beyond living memory, the lives of significant individuals in the past and significant events, people and places in their own locality.

The cross-curricular enquiry approach will ensure that children experience enquiries where being a historian is either the lead state-of-being or supporting state-of-being. The enquiry sequences go through the following steps: Engage, Immerse (know of), Immerse (know how), Practise (know of), Practise (know how) and Challenge.

Children will be provided with a range of rich experiences including, where possible, educational visits, visitors, outdoor learning and opportunities to explore a variety of historical artefacts. The enquiry-led approach will follow sequences of experiences, building on knowledge and understanding and making links across the curriculum. It will lead to the children being able to answer the enquiry question they are focusing on, in the ‘challenge’ part of the sequence, proving their understanding using the knowledge and skills they have developed.

The enquiries are planned carefully to ensure progression of knowledge and skills through the school.

Impact:

After the implementation of this curriculum, children at Christchurch Infants will be equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need as historians at this stage. Their understanding of the past, how things have changed and different events and people’s lives will enable them to make meaningful links to their lives and be prepared to move forward in their education as they move into KS2 and in their lives as individuals who can enquire and develop further as historians, curious to find out more.

Children will become more confident in the different historical skills that they are developing and have a wider breadth of knowledge that they can remember and recall due to meaningful and relevant experiences.

The impact of the curriculum will be assessed through:

• Work in challenge books
• Work in enquiry floor books.
• Photographs and videos of children’s work
• Pupil conferencing
• Thorough planning that has clear WALT’s and skills being taught
• Assessment data recorded by class teachers
• Subject knowledge quizzes

We use teacher judgement to assess at the end of each enquiry how well a child has mastered the objectives that have been covered. This information is recorded on Arbor three times a year. This allows for monitoring subject coverage, find and fill gaps and plan next steps. Feedback is sent to parents through reports three times per year.