History

Intent

History is all around us. At Mereside, we believe that the study of history ignites children’s curiosity about the past in Britain and the wider world. Through finding out about how and why the world, our country, culture and local community have developed over time, children understand how the past influences the present. History enables children to develop a context for their growing sense of identity and a chronological framework for their knowledge of significant events and people. 

History at Mereside has been planned considering the children first.  We want to choose topics that not only cover the national curriculum but also inspire, inform and draw on experiences of the children. We believe strongly that knowledge and skills embedded through foundation subjects such as History can help increase a child’s ability to improve literacy and critical thinking skills.  There are also links with other areas of the curriculum including Geography and RE.  The purpose of these cross-curricular links is once again to provide opportunities to build knowledge, ease working memory and free up the brain to be making connections and asking questions.  

We endeavour to build in opportunities to steadily make manageable steps into the next stage of learning.  Harder concepts and skills from the National Curriculum are returned to throughout the child’s experiences and carefully planned right through from Reception to Year Six, this is so that we can be deliberately ambitious in the questions and learning opportunities we provide the children.  What children learn through history can influence their decisions about personal choices, attitudes and values.

Finally, as a church school, we believe that love is at the heart of all that we do and in terms of History we hope this love is expressed through how we want children to become, caring global citizens who celebrate and value diversity and are good neighbours to all.

Implementation

In order to achieve our Intent for History we have chosen these units specifically to address these areas of our school curriculum. Our skills and progression document sets out how we achieve the History programme of study at Mereside.