History

How History is taught at Hillbourne Primary School

Our local area is full of history. Throughout their time at Hillbourne, children will learn about where we can see the impact of history in our local area such as the RNLI (from the Grace Darling topic in Year 1), to how the local area was bombed during WW2.

Where possible, topics are linked with the local area, visitors or with the experiences that the children have whilst at Hillbourne Primary School.

The history curriculum aims to ignite children’s love for history, preparing them with essential knowledge throughout their education. This begins with EYFS where the foundation is laid through the knowledge and vocabulary where children develop a sense of past and present, through stories and their own experiences which enables them to access history content in KS1.

The history units have been carefully chosen to cover as wide-ranging content as possible without compromising depth, breadth and coherence. From ancient civilisations (Egypt, Rome, Maya) and prehistoric Britain (Iron Age, Stone Age); looking at law and power across the ages to understanding invasion and migration and exploitation. The curriculum aims to introduce the children to a wide variety of men, women and children from the past; from the widely venerated, to the lives of the less well-known who offer us a rich insight into life at the time- from Aristotle to Nelson Mandela.

The history curriculum allows children to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of local, British and world history. It has been designed to be both knowledge-rich and coherently sequenced with repeated encounters in different contexts. Knowledge means not only substantive knowledge of historical events, dates and people in the past, but also knowledge of substantive concepts in history such as ‘empire’, ‘monarchy’ and ‘invasion’, and disciplinary historical concepts such as evidence, causation, significance and interpretation.

The history curriculum is balanced to enable children to look in some depth at local, national and world history, encouraging children to explore the connection between significant events and people and how they have influenced the modern world. The content in the curriculum ensures children have a secure overview of a period, before studying aspects in more depth. The curriculum content increases in range, depth and complexity as pupils move through the school.

We want children leaving Hillbourne school to be able to:-

  • Review Historical information
  • Know how the past has impacted on our lives today
  • Understand connections between local, regional and national history
  • Understand history as a chronological narrative