History
Year 6 visiting the Battle of Britain Memorial near Folkestone.This forms part of the Year 6 history learning with the topic question of 'What was the impact of WW2 on British people?'. It gives the children a real insight into the Battle of Britain and how it affected people living in Britain. It is within the local area, giving the children a sense of history affecting where they are from.
At Pilgrims’ Way, History is taught following the requirements of the National Curriculum. We provide a high-quality history education to help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world.
As a result of research, we follow Kapow's scheme of work, which is organised to reflect the fact that ‘knowledge of the past must be shaped by disciplinary approaches in order to become historical knowledge.’ (Ofsted research review series: History, 2021) This is an enquiry-based scheme with considered questions that the children can answer. Teaching equips pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.
At the start of our topics, we create a mind map of the students' knowledge before beginning our learning. We add to the mind map as we learn and review at the end of the topic to see if everything we first thought was correct.
An example of a Year 2 mind map on 'How was school different in the past?'
The history scheme of work is organised into substantive knowledge strands and disciplinary strands.
History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.
History is taught in terms 1, 3 and 5 across the school. This ensures children are returning to the subject frequently and developing on from their previous learning. Retrieval activities are implemented across the school throughout the year to support their long term memory.