At Guillemont Junior School, History has a clear learning journey across the whole school. The pupils will learn about the history of their local environment and community and how that links to the history of the British Isles and the wider world. History is taught through a Project-based learning approach to encourage development of both enquiry skills and substantive and disciplinary historical knowledge. We want to produce independent and evaluative thinkers who have empathy for how others live to develop an awareness, respect and curiosity for different cultures and societies and the past. Children should have the opportunity to ask questions, conduct their own research and work collaboratively and through the use of field work, trips and other experiences. History should be accessible to all learners, regardless of individual starting points.
At Guillemont Junior School the History curriculum is taught as part of Project-Based Learning; an enquiry approach including many cross-curricular links. In each year, three terms of the projects focus primarily on History. The children will attempt to answer an overarching enquiry question throughout the learning journey through a combination of approaches. All History projects are taught through Hampshire’s recommended ‘Six Step Enquiry’ approach. This encourages the children to become more independent learners, taking responsibility for their own learning. The children are encouraged to ask questions and develop their own lines of enquiry, using research skills to facilitate this. We approach learning creatively and understand that there is more than one way to achieve an objective or accomplish a task, in order to make lessons more engaging and accessible to all.
The sequence of learning across the school follows the recommended guidance from Hampshire, which is also followed by many other local infant and secondary schools ensuring that our learning journey builds on knowledge from Key Stage 1 and prepares the children for Key Stage 3. We follow a skills progression, also developed by Hampshire, in order to ensure curriculum coverage and develop the children’s key historical skills and understanding throughout the school. In Year 3 – 5 we teach British History from the Stone Age to the Victorians, including a local history project. In Years 5 – 6 the children learn about ancient civilisations in the wider world, comparing these to each other and also to contemporary British history. High quality, up-to-date resources are used to support learning including books, historical maps, photographs, internet and artefacts. Artefacts have been purchased by the school for each project and can be used throughout the enquiry to support understanding and develop Historical Enquiry skills.
Links are made with previous learning with progression through an enquiry-based project learning journey. Children work towards completing a quality outcome at the end of the learning journey to demonstrate their learning. This approach encourages collaborative learning and develops communication skills and resilience. This is further embedded through cross-curricular links in Reading and Writing opportunities and the use of Philosophy 4 Children within the learning journey teaches children how to explain their ideas and respect ideas that are different from their own.
The subject leader will support other teaching staff by implementing staff training. These will focus on areas identified as needed based on the results of a staff confidence survey, book monitoring and learning walks.
Every unit of History work across the school includes a trip (including a residential trip), visitor to the school or an experience day. This experiential learning strongly supports the children’s learning in the classroom, allows them to experience more of the outside world both within and beyond their local area and imbues them with a strong set of practical, social and emotional life skills.
Our school has a clear focus on the development of speech and language. We have implemented tiered vocabulary development throughout the curriculum and use working walls, visual prompts (WIDGIT) and pre-teach vocabulary. This helps children to make links and develop their speaking and listening, as well as their writing, across the curriculum. We scaffold the 20% who may need support with these resources to achieve, experience and learn equally to foster and kindle joy and a love of learning.
At Guillemont Junior School we can judge the success of our History curriculum in the following ways:
