History
Intent
The aim of history teaching at Midfield is to stimulate the children’s interest and understanding about the life of people who lived in the past. We teach children a sense of chronology, and through this they develop a sense of identity, and a cultural understanding based on their historical heritage.
Thus they learn to value their own and other people’s cultures in modern multicultural Britain and, by considering how people lived in the past, they are better able to make their own life choices today. We want children to understand how events in the past have influenced our lives today; we also want them to investigate these past events and, by so doing, develop the skills of enquiry, analysis, interpretation and problem-solving.
Implementation
Our history teaching focusses on enabling children to think as historians. We place an emphasis on examining historical artefacts and primary sources, and give children the opportunity to visit sites of historical significance. We encourage visitors to come into the school and talk about their experiences of events in the past whilst holding our own “Immersion Days”. We recognise and value the importance of stories in history teaching, and we regard this as an important way of stimulating interest in the past. We focus on helping children understand that historical events can be interpreted in different ways, and that they should always ask questions (e.g. ‘How do we know?’) about information they are given. Each unit provides experiential learning which engages the children and helps to secure their knowledge whilst building on their understanding of key historical concepts across the school.
Woven through our planning is a recognition of diversity – we teach the pupils that people from all backgrounds, ethnicities and religions have had an impact on the world, and we hope that every child sees themselves in our curriculum. In addition to this, we ensure our topics lend themselves well to our promotion and learning of British Values, with talks of democracy throughout the ages and discussions about the rule of law, tolerance and the rights of people.
Impact
By the time the children leave Midfield they should have developed:
∙ A secure knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from the historical periods covered.
∙ The ability to think critically about history and communicate confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
∙ The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.
∙ The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, forming and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
∙ A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
∙ A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgements.
∙ A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of historical topics.