At St Helen’s, we have a knowledge-rich curriculum which helps provide children with a strong foundation of knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Our curriculum is progressive, inclusive and provides challenges to all children to help empower and equip them with the skills to understand the complexity of the world over time. Our teaching of the curriculum encourages children to retain key information which allows them to be inquisitive, think critically and use evidence to develop perspective and judgement for themselves. 

• Teachers teach history 1 x a week for approximately 60 minutes 

• All history lessons follow the history curriculum which is progressive and knowledge rich 

• The content of the lessons are driven by the ARK curriculum, which has been adapted to suit the needs of our pupils 

• All lessons are vocabulary focused and working walls are used to display vocabulary to enhance learning 

• Knowledge and content expectations are the same for all children but lessons are scaffolded to allow access and challenge for all 

• Regular knowledge checks and retrieval quizzes allow children to recall and retain key knowledge 

• End of unit assessments allow data driven decisions when planning further content or coverage 

• Subject specific books are available to enrich children’s experiences further

Pupils will gain a clear historical perspective and will have the knowledge and skills to become global citizens. Pupils will know and retain more knowledge to allow the practice of skills to become meaningful in real-life contexts. Pupils will be empowered to participate in discussions, challenge their thinking about and understand connections between: 

- Local, regional, national and international history

- Cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history 

- Short and long term timescales

To assess progress against this, we use assessment methods to check on long term memory retention. The data we collect from this informs planning of future content and coverage.

Micro level - Formative assessment (Task by task) 

Ongoing AFL during lessons through: 

- Eliciting information through questioning and dialogue 

- Providing feedback with clear direction on how to improve 

- Helping children to understand how to become successful (criteria) 

Meso level - Lesson by lesson assessment 

- Knowledge checks at the start of the lesson to ensure children are remembering more content and vocabulary over time

- ‘Do now’ retrieval quizzes at the start of every lesson to recall key content and vocabulary from previous lesson

Macro level - End of unit

End of unit assessment based around content and knowledge taught throughout the unit. 

Data analysis to inform future planning and coverage. 

Mega level - Standardised test 

No Standardised tests are in place for the History Curriculum

I have learnt so much about World War 1! - Year 6 

I love learning about the Vikings. I am so interested in learning about all the Gods - Year 5

In History, we learn about the past - Year 2

I love looking at pictures of old cars and boats! - Year 1

I know all about Roman invasions now and where they lived and ruled in Britain - Year 4