‘A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.’

Marcus Garvey

At Walesby C of E Primary, we aim to help our children think and work as young historians. We want our children to Learn without limits, making meaningful cross-curricular links and utilising opportunities outside the classroom to enrich experience. The teaching and love of history is enhanced through story and rich text.

The study of history involves engaging our children in investigating questions about people and events in the past in order to enable them to better understand their lives today and for a future as more informed and enlightened citizens. 

Through the study of history our children also develop a wide range of critical thinking skills, which enable them to understand the contested nature of knowledge and to distinguish between ‘fact’ and subjectivity when it comes to reaching conclusions and making judgements about the past.  With this in mind, our curriculum is organised into a 2-year cycle  for Year 1/2 , Year 3 /4 and Year  5 & 6 and a 1 year cycle for FS2.

At Walesby, we want to create reflective, engaged and excited learners. Our children are encouraged to be curious and ask questions. We aim to develop them to be independent and to have a mind- set where they are able to develop their own learning further and make the links with prior learning.

Through creating these opportunities, we aim to create independent learners, creating a cycle of success. Our children are encouraged to recognise that failure and mistakes are all part of the learning process, encouraging them to take risks and develop perseverance and resilience.

EYFS

In the EYFS, our children will be learning history through:

Understanding the World

Children will…

• Begin to make sense of their own life-story and family history
• Recognise similarities and differences between their own lives and those in the past through stories
• Identify changes over a period of time
• Recognise that there is an order/sequence to daily and weekly routines
• Use the language of time when talking about past and present events
• Use sources and first hand experiences and storytelling to construct accounts of past times and people (curiosity collections)
• Recognise and describe how some familiar things and places were different in the past
• Comment on images of familiar situations in the past.
• Describe features of objects, people, places at different times and make comparisons
• Compare and contrast characters from stories, including figures from the past.
• Find out about key historical events and how and why we celebrate them today

At the end of the Foundation stage children will be assessed against the Early Learning Goals within the EYFS statutory framework:

ELG: Past and Present

Children will…

• Talk about the lives of people around them and their roles in society.
• Know some similarities and differences between things in the past and now, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class.
• Understand the past through settings, characters and events encountered in books read in class and storytelling.