Why do we teach history?

At Madginford Primary School, we want children to show curiosity & excitement as they uncover the stories of the past.

We want children to act as detectives, exploring the evidence left behind to reconstruct events & find out about everyday life. They will have the opportunity to study various periods, making comparisons, identifying similarities & differences as they go. Children show they can persevere, recognising when they might need to find more evidence before they can come to & share their own conclusions about what has happened.

Children will have the chance to study a range of people, significant events & places from around the world, demonstrating empathy & respect for the different cultures encountered & making links to their own lives.

How do we teach history?

At Madginford, we have identified three key skills that children need to have.

They need to:

• Use sources of evidence to understand what happened in the past
• Understand when things happened in the past
• Test their ideas about the past & explain what they have learnt.

There are also a number of ‘big ideas’ that we meet in every history topic: similarity & differences; causes & consequences; continuity & change and significance. Children become increasingly skilled at remembering, understanding & explaining these skills & ideas on their journey through the school.

Our curriculum is flexible as we will adapt our planned topics to allow time to explore & learn about significant events, both local and national, that happen through the year.