History
Our aims
At Scotton Lingerfield Primary School, we want children to be curious about the past and understand how it has shaped the world they know today. Our history curriculum introduces them to different periods, people and societies, helping them explore how lives have changed and what has stayed the same.
Children develop knowledge of Britain’s history alongside civilisations from the wider world. They consider the experiences of different people, the reasons behind significant events and the lasting effects of discoveries, decisions and changes.
We also want children to understand how we find out about the past. They learn to ask questions, examine evidence and recognise that accounts of the same event can differ. As their knowledge grows, they become increasingly confident in explaining their ideas and supporting them with evidence.
How we teach history
History is taught in blocks through a two-year rolling programme for our mixed-age classes. We use the Learning Challenge curriculum as a basis for planning. Each unit centres on an enquiry question, giving children a focus for investigating a period, event or historical theme.
Our progression documents set out how historical knowledge and skills develop from Reception to Year 6. Children revisit important concepts, including chronology, change and continuity, cause and consequence, significance and interpretation. They apply these ideas in different contexts, making connections between their current learning and periods they have studied before.
Alongside these historical skills, recurring themes such as monarchy, civilisation and society, invasion, trade, invention and legacy connect learning across different periods. Revisiting these themes helps children develop a more coherent understanding of the past.
Timelines help children place events in order and develop an understanding of how different periods relate to one another. Photographs, artefacts, written accounts and other sources provide opportunities to investigate the past and consider what the available evidence can tell us.
Through discussion and carefully chosen questions, children learn to compare experiences, explain changes and consider different interpretations. Historical vocabulary is introduced and revisited so that they can communicate their understanding accurately.
Trips and experiences help bring historical learning to life. Stories, discussion, presentations, debate, role-play and writing give children different ways to explore and communicate their understanding.
Teachers support access through carefully chosen texts, images, vocabulary teaching and discussion, adapting tasks where needed while maintaining the historical focus.
Building knowledge and skills across ages and stages
In Reception, children begin with their own lives and family histories. They use words such as ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘yesterday’ and ‘long ago’, and begin to place familiar events on simple timelines. Exploring old photographs, toys and objects helps them notice differences between life today and life in the past. Stories and enquiries about familiar experiences, such as seaside visits, introduce people and events beyond their own memories.
In Years 1 and 2, children explore changes within living memory and events further in the past. Studies include grandparents’ childhoods, Victorian life and the Great Fire of London, alongside significant people, monarchs and castles. They begin to use timelines to organise their learning, compare ways of life and suggest reasons why events happened. Handling artefacts and examining different sources helps them ask questions and begin to consider how we know about the past.
In Years 3 and 4, children develop a broader sense of chronology through studying Britain from the Stone Age to the end of Roman occupation. They investigate how homes and ways of life changed, and explore ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley civilisation and changes in crime and punishment. Children use dates and historical terms more accurately, sequence events across longer periods and explain significant developments. They compare accounts, recognise that evidence can be incomplete and begin to consider how bias may affect the way events are recorded.
In Years 5 and 6, children bring their learning together within a more secure understanding of British and world history. Studies include Britain after the Romans, the British Empire, the impact of the Second World War, early Islamic civilisation and the Maya. They make connections across periods and consider changes in society, technology, beliefs and power. Historical enquiry becomes more demanding as children distinguish between primary and secondary sources, consider propaganda and bias, and weigh evidence when explaining different interpretations. They develop their own informed conclusions, recognising that historical questions may have more than one reasonable answer.
Learning to think like historians
Throughout school, children learn that history involves both knowing about the past and investigating how that knowledge has been established. They move from noticing differences and asking simple questions towards comparing sources, evaluating evidence and constructing reasoned explanations.
We encourage children to consider whose experiences are represented in an account and why people may have understood or recorded events differently. Returning to ideas such as change, significance and cause helps them look beyond individual facts and develop a connected understanding of the past.
By the end of Year 6, we want children to have a secure foundation of historical knowledge, a clear sense of chronology and the confidence to ask questions, examine evidence and explain their thinking about the past.
