History
Intent
Southwark Park believes that all children deserve a high-quality history curriculum to achieve a wide range of historical skills that develops their knowledge and understanding of the past, and its influence on the modern world. With an enriching curriculum, we aim to inspire pupils’ curiosity to want to know more about the past, and encourage them through giving regular opportunities to ask insightful questions, think critically, weigh evidence and develop sound judgements and perspectives to help them make sense of the world we live in today. We deliver a broad, inclusive and accurate history curriculum, celebrating diversity through time, and studying historical figures who are particularly important to our local area and to the children in our school.
Implementation
The children are given regular opportunities to develop their knowledge and understanding of historical events with a focus on both local and global history. These concepts underpin the children’s understanding of how the modern world was shaped as it is today. Across the whole school, lessons planned are engaging and thought provoking, to ensure the children develop their knowledge and understanding progressively. This enables the children to make connections as they move up the school. To deepen their understanding, regular cross-curricular links are made and children are able to evidence their knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through the use of historical vocabulary in extended writing opportunities. A wide and diverse range of historical sources are used to encourage children to analyse, compare and contrast how a variety of interpretations of the past have been made and their impact on the validity of those sources to assist them in their critical thinking.
Impact
From as early as Year 1, children are given opportunities to develop their understanding of the world, comparing the past and present through discussing events in their own lives and in the lives of their family members. The key skills in comparing are developed and progressed throughout the school, building on the skills necessary for secondary school. For example, in Year 2, children study historical events such as the voyage of the Mayflower and its impact and importance in understanding today’s world. Topics are mapped out carefully to ensure that the children develop their knowledge and understanding progressively as they move through the school. At Southwark Park, a range of historical time periods are studied, including Stone Age, Iron Age, Romans, Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, World War II and The Benin Kingdom. These topics give children the regular opportunity to make connections between civilisations and have an understanding that civilisations occurred at varying intervals and often overlapped with others. Formative and summative assessment ensure all children make strong progress across the school, are challenged appropriately and leave Southwark Park with the skills needed for secondary school, as well as a broad and balanced understanding of many time periods throughout history from all around the world. They will have the skills required to analyse historical evidence, understand bias and draw conclusions from the evidence as budding historians.
