‘To nurture talent and achievement in everyone and build the foundations for success in the 21st Century'
History at Holmesdale
At Holmesdale Community Infant School, our school vision drives all that we do. In designing our history curriculum, our intent is to deliver an inclusive curriculum, which ignites and feeds a burning curiosity and fascination about the Britain’s past and that of the wider world. History’s unique concepts support children to develop and deepen their perceptive questioning skills and enquiry, supporting them to become analytical citizens of the 21st Century.
In EYFS, we ensure there are plenty of opportunities to expand the children's knowledge and understanding of events, people and changes in the past and develop children's investigative and interpretive skills. The children are supported to access a wide breadth of learning activities aimed to bring together a number of key learning areas. The planning is supported by the EYFS Development Matters documentation and we work towards the children meeting the Early Learning Goals by the end of their Reception year. They may also act as a springboard for independent exploration in other areas of the children’s learning. We do this by ensuring the children are starting to understand the following:
- Beginning to use historical based language – language associated with the passage of time.
- A sense of uniqueness and of belonging to a community.
- Developing a sense of historical enquiry.
- Comparison and contrast, similarity and differences, variety.
- Historical narrative and sequence and a sense of chronology and duration.
Children move up to KS1 with growing awareness and curiosity of the world around them and events that have taken place. Holmesdale have a carefully planned, long term history curriculum, aimed to cover a breadth of topics which are adapted to suit the interests of the children in the school, as well as meet the requirements of the National Curriculum. By the end of KS1, we expect that the children will be able to sequence historical events and will use a wide vocabulary of everyday historical terms to write sentences about selected appropriate knowledge and understanding of history.
Where possible we endeavour to bring history alive in lessons by use of artefacts, immersive workshops and inviting local historians to talk to the children. We also strive to strengthen relationships with the local and wider community, incorporating local expertise when we can. We also ensure that children have opportunities to work outside the classroom, by going on historical walks and organising visits and trips during their time at the school.