'A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.'
Marcus Garvey
What does history look like at Uplands?
At Uplands Primary School we aim to deliver a history curriculum that is accessible to all and that will inspire curiosity, encourage debate, pose and answer critical questions and allow children to develop a better understanding of the world in which they live. We want our children to be open minded individuals who are ready to question the world in which they live and recognise how the past impacts their current world.
Our teaching of history will help pupils gain a secure knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. The curriculum is structured in a way that allows for children to make links between current and previous learning. Teachers make comparisons between historical periods previously taught, developing children’s chronological knowledge and understanding from the Stone Age to present day. We make links to our five Big Ideas that appear throughout all subjects in our curriculum: environment, similarities and differences, diversity, relationships and changes. All classes start their lessons with a retrieval practice activity focusing on the key knowledge and key vocabulary about their current unit or a previous unit with the aim to support the children to know more, remember more and understand more.
We want history to be creative, fun, relevant and meaningful to the children’s own lives and experiences. Starting with our children’s own personal history we will investigate a range of sources such as pictures, stories, non-fiction texts, objects and artefacts to ask and answer questions about the past. We include areas of study that relate to our specific location: our Victorian school; the history of local monuments; the impact of the industrial revolution on Stroud; the history of Stroud’s canals and cloth industry.
Enrichment Opportunities
We enrich our curriculum through relevant trips, visitors to the school and real-life sources of history as much as possible. In the past, these have included:
History Outcomes
At Uplands, we communicate our learning through a variety of outcomes. These can include extended written outcomes, essays answering enquiry questions, drama, visual representations, debates and discussions and even stop-motion animations!
Class teachers formatively assess the children’s understanding of the historical concepts and key knowledge taught throughout their lessons. They also record an overall understanding of key areas at the end of each unit to enable the subject leader and future teachers to have a picture of each child’s learning journey throughout their time from Reception to Year 6.
Watch the video below to see our children explain some of the history units we study at Uplands School.
One of our favourite units that we study in our KS1 class is that of the Great Fire of London. The children love learning about this real-life story and what the impact was on our capital city. We always end our unit by creating a stop motion animation that retells the events. You can watch some of our past fabulous animations below.
Diversity in our History Curriculum
Diversity is one of our Big Ideas and, as such, we have ensured that it is threaded throughout our curriculum. We feel it is important that black history is celebrated across the year. Below are some of the ways that we have done this.
Retrieval Practice
We aim for our children to retain the knowledge they have learnt in our history lessons. To support this, we do regular retrieval practice sessions in class. These sessions are done in a range of ways and can be based on the current topic but also previously learnt topics. Test your knowledge by trying out one of our quizzes on our Victorian topic below. Good luck!
End of Unit Outcomes
We have mapped out our history curriculum to ensure the units follow on chronologically and build on previously learnt knowledge. We also encourage our children to make connections between periods of history and compare them by looking at the similarities and differences. Below we have set out our end of unit outcomes for each year group. We have picked out the key learning points from each unit that we want all children to remember. These small steps of learning will build towards the end of unit outcome.