History Curriculum 

At Waterville Primary, we aim to inspire pupils to be curious about the lives of people who lived in the past. We want children to develop a sense of identity and a cultural understanding, based on their local history along with an understanding of aspects of British history and of the wider world. We teach children the historical enquiry skills they need to investigate past events and also to analyse and interpret facts to understand how they have influenced our lives today. 

 

Implementation

At Waterville Primary, we teach each History topic over six sessions in a term. History units are clearly sequenced for progression across all year groups in school. We teach vocabulary explicitly and this is reviewed and built upon in every year group. Our curriculum is based around a main enquiry for each topic followed by further sub-enquiries in each lesson and uses a creative approach, often linking core and foundation subjects together to give children a broad range of experiences. We use a wide range of high quality resources such as library books, artefacts, local visits within our area and visitors to school wherever possible. In order to prepare pupils for their future learning in History, we introduce Key Stage 2 children to key substantive concepts including power, invasion, settlement and migration, empire, civilisation, religion, trade, achievements of humankind, society and culture. 

 

Impact of History curriculum

At Waterville Primary, we teach a broad and inspiring History curriculum. We teach the children to become Historians and to ask and answer questions to further their understanding of a topic. Children are enthused and engaged in the wide variety of activities they learn in History through different topics. We link History to other curriculum areas where possible, particularly English, Art and DT. Class trips and links with our local environment ensure our children understand its significance and place within the wider world and that these excite and inspire children’s thirst for knowledge in this subject. Over the past few years we have had successful trips to Beamish, The Fish Quay and into Newcastle. We are continually developing local links and have completed projects with a local North Shields Historical society.