The Principles of our History Curriculum

Our history curriculum makes links between what has been learnt before and what is being learnt in other curriculum areas. It is designed to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past.

Teaching will equip pupils to 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.

Teaching History at Buxton Junior School

• We use the CUSP history curriculum resources, built around the principles of advancing cumulative knowledge, chronology, change through cause and effect, as well as making connections within and throughout periods of time studied. These resources contain knowledge organisers for each unit of study, lesson by lesson dual coded knowledge notes based on the question they will investigate and have cumulative quizzes to allow teachers to check for understanding throughout the unit of work. Furthermore, unit specific vocabulary is outlined in addition to common misconceptions to aid planning.

• To develop pupils understanding about place, we complete the ‘Our Understanding of a Historical Period’ sheet for each location studied. This allows pupils to build their schema of periods studied in relation to chronology, key events and advancements as well as links to other time periods studied in the BJS curriculum.

• To develop schema around the key historical concepts of Community, Knowledge, Invasion, Civilisation, Power and Democracy we use our History Learning Journeys, allowing pupils to connect their learning throughout our history curriculum and build on learning in Key Stage 1.