The Laceby Acres long term History plan, alongside our ‘Big Ideas’ summary gives an at a glance synopsis of the topics covered from EYFS to Y6. It also allows for an overview of how our History curriculum is mapped for each year group over the academic year. The symbols reflect how progression is made over time and are linked to our ‘Build an Overview’ themes which reflect the concepts required to build pupils substantive knowledge.
To cultivate a deeper understanding of history a clear progression route is in place as well as opportunities to revisit topics from previous years. Alongside this, cross-subject links and references are practiced to help students embed holistic knowledge.
In addition to this the overview incorporates symbols to represent the declarative knowledge that pupils can develop to become historians. These methods of enquiry (communicate historically, interpret historically, historical enquiry and understand chronology) are sewn into each lesson to bring out the historian in every child.
History Overview
At Laceby Acres Academy, we have chosen to use the Rising Stars History scheme of work as the basis for our History Curriculum. In each unit of work the key knowledge, skills and vocabulary are identified, which ensures that the children are revisiting the Threshold Concepts in each unit. A progression framework for History has been developed, which allows us to make accurate assessments as to whether the children are working towards, working at or exceeding expectations. A high quality children’s text is central to our delivery of each historical unit of work.
We use a range of pedagogical approaches, which support the teaching of History. Our philosophies for teaching history have been designed to develop our pupil’s substantive and disciplinary knowledge through four methods of enquiry that meet the criteria for successful historians. We embed these skills into each lesson and pupils have the opportunity to progress their skills in this area as they move through the history curriculum. We have also introduced History Ambassadors to promote History throughout the school and they have recently been able to work with Heritage Lincolnshire to discover about local hero Edward Watkin.
We have crafted structured knowledge organisers to ensure children are able to explore the substantive knowledge required with a leading question each week designed to develop pupil’s disciplinary knowledge. Emphasis is placed on retaining their newly acquired understanding of each topic resulting in a change in their long term memory. We measure the impact of our History Curriculum in several ways. Firstly, we use the History Progression Framework to measure, through use of progressive milestones, whether a child is working towards, meeting or exceeding in their knowledge, skills and understanding of the Threshold Concepts. At Laceby Acres Academy, we expect all children to produce beautiful work and to take pride in their learning outcomes. We regularly scrutinise work books to check that these standards are being upheld.