Great Tey Primary
SchoolHistory
Our history curriculum is based on the National Curriculum, and aims to help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Our history curriculum aims to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past, ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.
In 2019, we purchased the Cornerstones Curriculum as the basis of our history curriculum in order to ensure we fully cover all of the requirements of the National Curriculum and to provide a means of assessing children's confidence and learning. We adapt this curriculum to our school by taking every opportunity to learn about the history of our local area, including the history of Great Tey and Colchester, by using trips, visits and special days to develop children's love of history.
Please read on below to find more information on what we teach, how we teach it and how we ensure we are creating historians of the future!
Why do we learn history?
We are creating future historians by ....
- developing children's interest in, and curiosity about, the world around them and its past
- ensuring children have opportunities to ask and answer questions about their world through exploring, observing, comparing and evaluating
- revisiting key skills and knowledge across the primary years to ensure children's understanding of the past and of chronology is embedded and can be used to compare different contexts
- equipping children with the knowledge of the past they need to understand the impact of the past on our present and our future
- developing children's ability to ask questions, interpret the evidence, make judgements and state their viewpoints with increasing clarity and confidence
- introducing children to the wide range of jobs historians can do and nurturing their ambitions to work in history-based jobs in the future, contributing to their communities and the wider world
What do we learn?
Whole School Curriculum Map
Our Whole School Curriculum Map for History can be found here: Year A Year B. It shows how different skills will be developed over your child's time at Great Tey.
(To decide which year we are in, A or B, years starting in an 'odd' year - September 2023, 2025 etc. - are Year A, years beginning in an 'even' year - September 2022, 2024 etc. - are Year B.)
Class Maps
Please see below for our Class Maps, which give further information on skills development in your child's class through our Cornerstones topics.
Click on your child's class below for History Cycle A
Ducklings (Blocks A and B are the same for Reception)
Click on your child's class below for History Cycle B covering the year 2022-2023 / 2024-2025
Ducklings (Blocks A and B are the same for Reception)
What does our learning in history help us to do?
- develop our understanding of the world around us
- ask and answer questions, developing our ability to ask questions of increasing relevance
- develop our vocabulary to report our findings with increasing clarity, to answer questions and to justify the conclusions we have come to based on the evidence
- understand the importance of evidence, including knowing which evidence is likely to be most reliable
- make connections between our lives and lives of people in the past
- prepare for our future, whether working in a history-based career or continuing to develop our interest in the past through reading, travel, art, music.