HISTORY at FOREST HILLS
TEACHING HISTORY IN SCHOOL
Our Curriculum aspires to create curious and knowledgeable young people, who hold a deep understanding and appreciation of the discipline of history, and are able to sift and weigh evidence to begin to formulate their own viewpoints and perspectives of the world.
Our history curriculum has been designed to be both knowledge-rich and coherently sequenced using the Primary Knowledge Curriculum. Knowledge, in the realm of history, 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 ‘civil war’), and disciplinary historical concepts (such as evidence, causation, significance and interpretation).
Our history curriculum allows children to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of local, British and world history. The substantive knowledge taught in the curriculum has been carefully chosen and sequenced using a largely chronological approach.
Each unit of work is viewed as a chapter in the story of the history of Britain and the wider world. In this sense, the chronological approach we have chosen provides a solid framework, anchoring each unit within an understanding of wider history and causation. Children will be able to understand the causes of significant national and global events, (such as World War I), when they have some background knowledge of what happened before (such as the origins and growth of European empires, including the British Empire).
Alongside their study of the UK and Europe, children will extend their knowledge beyond these regions to study world geography. When studying world geography, children will focus on places such as North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands. Applying their knowledge and understanding of the globe, latitude, longitude, the hemispheres and time zones, children will describe and understand physical geography of countries and continents including biomes, vegetation belts, rivers, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes. They will consider a range of human geographical features such as settlements, land use, trade links and natural resources.
WHY IS HISTORY IMPORTANT TO OUR CHILDREN?
Hollie-Mae Year 1
“I love history. We learned about Edward Jenner – he stopped Small Pox. He used the pus from Cow Pox to make injections.”
Logan Year 3
“In history we learned about the Anglo Saxons and when they came to Britain. The Anglo Saxons settled around Britain.”
Arla-Rae Year 5
“Last year, we learned about the War of the Roses and when we went to Warwick Castle we watched a joust that retold the story.”
HISTORY IN EYFS
In Early Years, there are opportunities planned in the environment for children to understand ‘past and present’. We talk about things that happened in the past and relate this to the children themselves. For example we talk about them as a baby and before they were born.