History

History Intent

History fires pupils’ curiosity, developing their love of learning through asking questions about the past and the wider world. It enables our children to develop a chronological framework for their knowledge of significant events and people, allowing them to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding. This guides children to make sense of their physical world and their community.

Through our Christ Church Curriculum Safari, children are able to develop their historical knowledge, understand the process of change and make sense of the present. They are able to construct and develop arguments supporting them to become analytical citizens. Both knowledge and skills are taught in a cross curricular way, ensuring the curriculum deepens knowledge, is progressive and allows links to other areas of learning.

Our History curriculum has been created with cultural capital at the forefront of our minds, so that our children are exposed to historical events which link to the many different cultures within our school, as well as those events explored within the National Curriculum.

History Overview Year 1-6

Autumn 2022

Black History Month is once again our focus for October. This year’s theme is Time of Change: Action not Words, a theme that aims to encourage people to speak up against racism and be active not passive bystanders to the injustices we see. This is a special time, where we promote knowledge of black history, culture and heritage.

This Black History Month, we celebrated black authors and illustrators such as Malorie Blackman, Nathan Bryon, Dapo Adeola, Eric Velasqueuz, Vashti Harrison, Shane Evans and Amanda Gorman just to mention a few. We are continually striving to create an environment where children feel safe and welcomed no matter their origins, supporting everyone identifying the many forms of prejudice and racism that exists and the strategies to help support them in challenging these.

Spring Term 2022

17th January was Martin Luther King Day and at Christ Church we used this day to celebrate inspirational people from the past. EYFS enjoyed dressing up as Princess Diana, made crowns and made royal statues from clay.

In Year 4, inspired by Stephen Hawking’s theorem about black hole mechanics, they created amazing artwork using a variety of materials.

In Year 5, through a variety of activities such as art , research and speech writing, the children learned about Picasso, Anne Frank and Martin Luther King.

In Year 6, through a range of activities such as reading comprehension, research and discussion, the children learned about Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi and Amelia Earhart.

Autumn term 2021

During the Autumn Term we had a fantastic selection of projects: from drama sessions, models, masks from Ancient Kingdoms, paintings of poppies, posters and diary entries. It was great to see how much the children have enjoyed the History projects taking place across the school.

In EYFS, the children have compared and contrasted characters from stories, including figures from the past. Jesus was born a long time ago. They shared the story by putting on a nativity play and discussed how their families celebrate a baby being born. They shared discussion about the lives of significant people around them and their roles in society. Here is a poppy creation they made together:

Year 1 have focused on describing where the people and events studied fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods. They discussed the differences between Victorian school life and how school is now with a follow-on activity of a debate on which school was better. They also placed key events on a timeline.

Year 2 have explored using different sources to find out about life in the trenches during World War 1. They asked questions about the war and why Remembrance Day is a significant national and local event.

Year 3 have focused on the use a variety of resources to find out about aspects of life in the past.

Year 4 have explored what the Anglo-Saxons culture was like. They discussed primary and secondary sources, drawing out the reliability of each. They enjoyed Sutton Hoo burial ship and asked a lot of pertinent questions.

Year 5 focused on using dates to order and place events on a timeline. They children also explored how useful sources of historical evidence is to building a picture of the past. We discussed the significance of Remembrance Day and created our own illustrations of poppies.

Year 6 focused on understanding how knowledge from the past is constructed from a range of sources with focus on the Ancient Benin Kingdom Benin (West Africa) c. AD 900-1300.

During our History lessons the children at Christ Church have been learning about so many different periods of time. We have made Viking shields and learned about Roman settlements. We have produced time lines of the events in WW1 and WW2, designed our own war medals in clay, built Anderson shelters, and compared key historical events, looking at socio-economic change over the years in both Britain and the rest of the world.

Black History Month

National Dress Day

October marks the start of Black History Month and we are very proud to say that cultural capital is now embedded throughout our new curriculum, therefore this will be celebrated throughout the year in every classroom. However, as we are truly blessed to be part of such a diverse community, we invited all children in school to come in wearing a national dress from a country of their choice. We had a lovely day celebrating all the different cultures within our school!