Alsager Highfields History
Intent
At Alsager Highfields, we aim to inspire children to become curious, knowledgeable and thoughtful historians. We want our pupils to develop a secure understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world, while learning to question, investigate and interpret the evidence that allows us to understand the past.
Our History curriculum is ambitious for all pupils. It is carefully designed to develop both substantive knowledge – the knowledge of people, events, periods and concepts – and disciplinary knowledge – an understanding of how historians investigate the past, construct accounts and reach conclusions.
We want children to understand History as a coherent story rather than a collection of isolated topics. Our curriculum therefore develops children's chronological understanding and enables them to make connections within and across different periods of history. Pupils build an increasingly secure mental timeline upon which new knowledge can be organised.
Throughout their time at Alsager Highfields, children repeatedly encounter four overarching historical themes:
Society and Community | Exploration and Invasion | Power | Conflict and Disaster
These themes allow children to make meaningful connections between different historical periods and consider how aspects of human experience have changed, developed or remained constant over time.
Alongside these themes, pupils develop their understanding of important substantive concepts, including ideas such as civilisation, empire, monarchy, migration, settlement, trade, industry and rebellion. These concepts are deliberately revisited in different historical contexts, allowing children's understanding to become increasingly sophisticated as they progress through school.
Our curriculum also develops the disciplinary knowledge children need to think and work as historians. Learning is structured around six key disciplinary concepts:
- Chronology
- Evidence and Interpretation
- Cause and Consequence
- Change and Continuity
- Similarity and Difference
- Historical Significance
Through these concepts, pupils learn that our knowledge of the past is constructed from evidence. They learn to ask historically valid questions, consider the reliability and usefulness of sources, explore different interpretations and increasingly use evidence to support their own conclusions.
We want our pupils to leave Alsager Highfields understanding that History is not simply about remembering dates and facts. It is about asking questions, examining evidence, recognising different perspectives, making connections and constructing informed explanations about the past.
Implementation
At Alsager Highfields, History is taught through a carefully sequenced curriculum using Grammarsaurus History. The curriculum meets the aims of the National Curriculum while ensuring that children's historical knowledge, vocabulary and disciplinary understanding develop progressively from EYFS to Year 6.
Building historical understanding from EYFS
Children's historical understanding begins in EYFS through Understanding the World.
Children talk about the lives of people around them and their roles in society, explore similarities and differences between the past and present, and encounter the past through settings, characters and events in books and storytelling. These early experiences provide important foundations for the more formal study of History in Key Stage 1.
Key Stage 1
In Key Stage 1, children develop an awareness of the past and begin to use chronological vocabulary confidently.
Through studies including Toys, Famous Explorers, Kings, Queens and Castles, Technology, Hospitals and Healthcare and the Great Fire of London, children encounter significant individuals and events as well as changes within and beyond living memory.
Children begin to place people, events and artefacts on timelines, ask questions about historical evidence and explore why events happened and what resulted from them. They identify changes over time, make comparisons and begin to understand why particular people and events are historically significant.
Key Stage 2
In Key Stage 2, children's knowledge and disciplinary understanding become increasingly sophisticated.
Pupils study a carefully selected range of British and world history, including:
Year 3: Stone Age to Iron Age and Ancient Egypt
Year 4: Ancient Greece and the Romans
Year 5: Anglo-Saxons and Vikings and Ancient Maya
Year 6: World War II and Crime and Punishment
These units provide opportunities for children to revisit important substantive concepts in different contexts. Ideas such as civilisation, trade, settlement, empire and monarchy are encountered across different periods, while migration and settlement connect children's learning about prehistoric Britain with their later study of Anglo-Saxons and Vikings.
This deliberate revisiting helps pupils understand both the distinctive features of individual historical periods and the broader patterns, connections and contrasts that exist across history.
Chronology
Chronology is central to our History curriculum.
Children develop an increasingly secure understanding of when events and periods occurred and how they relate to one another. Timelines are used purposefully to help children organise their knowledge and develop a coherent mental model of the past.
Progression is carefully planned. Younger children use language such as past, present, older and newer before progressing to placing events, artefacts and historical figures on timelines and using dates, BCE and CE. By Upper Key Stage 2, pupils use dates and historical terminology accurately and identify and compare periods of rapid change and relative continuity.
Historical enquiry, evidence and interpretation
We believe children should understand how we know about the past, not simply what happened.
Children therefore work with a range of historical evidence and learn to ask questions, make observations and draw conclusions. As their historical understanding develops, pupils increasingly consider the reliability of sources, compare different accounts and recognise that interpretations of the past may differ.
By Year 6, pupils use sources to form conclusions and understand that no single source of evidence can provide the complete answer to a historical question. They progress towards analysing a range of evidence to justify historical claims and refining lines of enquiry.
This enables pupils to understand that historical knowledge is constructed through the careful examination and interpretation of evidence.
Developing historical thinking
Across the curriculum, children are taught to consider:
Why did this happen? What were the consequences?
What changed and what remained the same?
How was this period similar to or different from another?
Why is this person, event or development historically significant?
What does the evidence tell us? How reliable is it?
Why might different accounts of the same event exist?
As pupils progress through school, their answers become increasingly informed by secure substantive knowledge and supported by historical evidence.
For example, in Year 4 pupils move beyond simply learning about the Roman invasion of Britain. They suggest and evaluate causes and consequences, explore change following the Roman arrival and consider different accounts of historical events, including why accounts of Boudicca may differ.
Vocabulary
We recognise that vocabulary is fundamental to historical understanding.
Historical vocabulary is therefore explicitly taught, modelled and revisited throughout our curriculum. Children develop both general historical language and vocabulary specific to the periods they study.
Children begin with vocabulary such as past, present, change, evidence, timeline, decade and century before encountering increasingly sophisticated and period-specific terminology.
As pupils progress through Key Stage 2, vocabulary becomes increasingly specialised. For example, the Stone Age curriculum introduces language including agriculture, domestication, excavation, migration and settlement, while later studies introduce concepts and terminology associated with empire, invasion, government, society and conflict.
Vocabulary is not taught in isolation. Children are expected to understand and apply historical terminology when speaking, questioning, explaining and writing about the past.
Making connections
A key strength of our curriculum is the deliberate opportunity for children to connect their learning across different periods of history.
Substantive concepts are revisited rather than encountered once. For example, children encounter the concept of monarchy through Kings, Queens and Castles before meeting it again through Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, Ancient Maya and later historical studies.
Similarly, concepts such as trade, civilisation, settlement and empire recur across different periods and societies.
This enables children to build increasingly rich conceptual understanding and to compare developments across different times and places rather than viewing each unit as an isolated body of knowledge.
Impact
The impact of our History curriculum is seen in pupils who are increasingly knowledgeable, curious and confident historians.
By the time children leave Alsager Highfields, we expect them to have developed a secure and connected body of historical knowledge and a strong chronological framework within which they can organise new learning.
Children will be able to:
- explain significant people, events and periods from British and world history;
- place their knowledge within an increasingly secure chronological framework;
- make connections between different periods of history;
- use historical and subject-specific vocabulary accurately;
- explain cause and consequence;
- identify and explain change and continuity;
- identify similarities and differences between societies and periods;
- consider the historical significance of people, events and developments;
- use a range of historical evidence to investigate the past;
- recognise that historical sources have limitations;
- understand why interpretations of the past can differ;
- use evidence to construct increasingly informed historical explanations.
Assessment is ongoing and informs teaching. Teachers use questioning, discussion, retrieval opportunities, timelines, historical enquiries and children's written and practical work to establish what pupils know, remember and can do. This enables teachers to identify misconceptions and gaps and ensure that future teaching builds securely upon previous learning.
By Year 6, pupils are expected to analyse evidence to justify claims, recognise the limitations of individual sources, identify and explain change using social, religious, political, cultural and technological contexts, and communicate change and continuity using appropriate historical vocabulary.
Ultimately, we want children to leave Alsager Highfields with a genuine fascination for the past and an understanding that History is investigated, debated and interpreted. They should recognise how studying the experiences, decisions and actions of people in the past can deepen their understanding of societies and the world in which they live today.