History

History happens at Firs Farm School! It is a favourite subject in all year groups and it is backed up with plenty of trips, visits, Wow Days and displays. 

Our Reception children enjoy learning to contrast the past with the present and they develop an understanding of chronology and sequencing. They do this through a combination of directed activities and play.

In Key Stage 1 our children learn and revisit specific skills and understanding about the past. An example of this is our Year 1 children compare two periods of history by studying the lives of Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong. Meanwhile in Year 2, these skills are embedded when our children compare the lives and times of Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell.

In Key Stage 2 we follow the HEP curriculum with in depth studies of a range of ancient and first millennium civilisations. We easily exceed the requirements of the National Curriculum as we work through the past chronologically, repeating key concepts and building our working vocabulary and understanding. We aim to reflect the demographics of our school as we do this, for example, studying the lives of black Roman Britons and learning about early Islamic Civilisations. 

Our learning about History feeds into our writing in English as we describe, recount, report and explain the events and people of the past. We underpin all this with clear learning and teaching about how we know all this - archaeology, artefacts, art and ancient writing.

All of this feeds into our assessment of History and we aim for all children to achieve Age Related Expectations in History.