Click on the sections below to explore and learn more about the History curriculum at St Michael’s.

Our Vision for History at St Michael’s Primary School

History at St Michael’s is key to helping children build up a clear chronological understanding of Britain’s past and the wider world.  The curriculum inspires children in their curiosity about the past, equipping them to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence and examine arguments to develop a broad and balanced perspective about events in history.  As children develop their understanding of the complexity of people’s lives from the past, they also better understand the diversity in societies and relationships.  As they progress, the History curriculum helps children to develop their own identity, creating an understanding of the past and an appreciation of how we are impacted now and into the future. 

The following skills are systematically developed through the History curriculum: 

  • Historical Enquiry – asking questions, using sources and evidence to construct and challenge the past, and communicating ideas  
  • Cause – selecting and combining information that might be deemed a cause and shaping it into a coherent causal explanation  
  • Consequence – understanding the relationship between an event and other future events.  
  • Change and continuity – analysing the pace, nature and extent of change. 
  • Similarity and difference – analysing the extent and type of difference between people, groups, experiences or places in the same historical period.  
  • Historical significance – understanding how and why historical events, trends and individuals are thought of as being important.  
  • Historical interpretations – understanding how and why different accounts of the past are constructed 

Topics are delivered in a coherent and sequential manner, enabling children to make links within their learning and appreciating connections within and between events in History. Aside from the carefully mapped progression of topics, key historical concepts are used to signpost groups of units that link to one another and build a common body of knowledge over time. These concepts bring to mind the notion of a thread weaving through the curriculum.  In addition to figures in History, children will also come to know significant people in relation to each topic which links them through research, a local connection or through the impact they have had on a local, national or global level. 

Our key historical concepts are substantive threads that span the entire curriculum across Key Stage 1 & 2, with their routes in Foundation Stage. They represent important ideas that are necessary for pupils to return to again and again with increased complexity to gain a developed and deep understanding over time.  They are: 

  • Trade (World History) 
  • Law & Order (Local History) 
  • Power & Society (British History) 

 

Through an ambitious, motivating and knowledge-rich curriculum, children will:  

  • Develop a deep chronological understanding of the UK and the local area, including its interactions with the wider world.  
  • Develop a wide and deep understanding of historical substantive concepts, such as trade, law & order and power & society.  
  • Be exposed to significant ancient civilisations, empires and non-European societies.  
  • Draw connections between different aspects of local, regional, national and international history.  
  • Use timelines to support organisation of substantive knowledge of key events and time periods.  
  • Develop the disciplinary knowledge essential to developing historical understanding, including knowledge of the process of historical enquiry, understanding cause and consequence, understanding that different versions of the past exist and using a variety of historical sources of evidence. 
History

Our History Subject Leader is Mrs Entwistle.