HISTORY
Local History:
Bushey Museum
Local History:
Verulamium Museum - St Albans
EYFS
In Reception, our children:
- talk about the lives of the 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
Value Statement:
At Bournehall Primary School, we value history because it teaches children to...
- be curious and to question the information they are presented with to further their historical understanding
- explore culture, beliefs and values to develop an understanding of themselves and others
- learn about similarities, differences, diversity and how we live in an interdependent global world
- understand how they, their family and friends are linked to the historical fabric of their local area, country and the world
- gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world
- ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement
- 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
A historian has:
- an excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes
- the ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very 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, formulating 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 judgments
- a desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.
Our History Curriculum:
Our history curriculum enables pupils to develop strong substantive knowledge of the past, while gaining the disciplinary knowledge to think like a historian and communicate confidently using historical vocabulary. Starting in the Early Years, we explore enquiry questions, stories of the past and consider different interpretations of the evidence available to us. Children learn why sources of evidence may be unreliable and that the past might be understood differently by different people, in different contexts. For example, in Year 3, children examine several artworks and accounts of Boudicca and discuss why she may have been portrayed so dissimilarly.
Our pupils build their knowledge through carefully planned units of study and by revisiting substantive concepts such as monarchy and government. In Year 5, children compare Ancient Athenian democracy with the rule of monarchs who they have learned about in previous year groups and their own experience of democracy as a British Value. In Key Stage Two, we take a chronological approach to studying world and British history, ensuring that pupils develop an overview of the past as well as chronology within eras and themes of study. Our pupils build a strong narrative of the history of our local area: from debating the importance of a bronze arrow head found locally and the mention of ‘Bissei’ in the Domesday Book, to the coming of the railway which turned Bushey into a much larger town.
We use the 'Key Stage History' scheme to deliver history lessons at Bournehall Primary School. In Key Stage One and Two, we are working on these Threshold Concepts (Chris Quigley – Essentials Curriculum):
- investigate and interpret the past,
- build an overview of world history,
- understand chronology,
- communicate historically
Our students say:
'The past can’t be changed but every generation re-writes history because we all interpret the evidence differently.'
'History is like a jigsaw puzzle but some of the pieces are missing or from different boxes. We have to piece the evidence together.'
'We want to build an overview of world history so that we can understand how our stories fit in with other people from the past around the world.'
