History
Our school vision
"This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118
Our curriculum vision - Our Intent
At Finchampstead Church of England Primary School, we aim for a high-quality history curriculum, which enables the development of a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and its association to the wider world. Within this, we provide a broad, balanced curriculum, which encompasses the British Values throughout. Our exciting, tailored topics aim to inspire curiosity within our pupils, to enable them to think and act like historians. The teaching sequences empower our pupils to understand the history of Britain and how it has influenced and been influenced by the wider world, know and understand about significant aspects of the history of the wider world (including ancient civilisations and empires), explain changes within and beyond living memory and learn about the lives of significant people of the past. Our skills based curriculum also equips children with the ability to answer perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments and develop perspective and judgement.
We want to 'grow' Finchampstead Historians who love learning about history by gaining this knowledge, understanding and skills, not just through experiences in the classroom, but also with the use of fieldwork and educational visits, enabling then to deepen their understanding of who and what has shaped our world today.
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in history, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school; our history is taught in two year cycles due to our four classes being organised with mixed year groups. History is taught as part of a half-termly (KS1) or termly (KS2) topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. Our curriculum was designed to ensure knowledge of skills were explicitly and progressively built into sequences of lessons.
At Finchampstead School, we recognise the importance for children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences through hands-on, practical activities. We ensure this through fieldwork and educational visits but also with memorable events which make cross curricular links such as designing and planning an ancient Greek feast, researching and building iron age round houses, recreating the Great Fire of London or even mummifying 'sausages!'
It is important that our children share their learning with their families and have an audience for their work: family learning events are organised where appropriate to showcase the children's learning abut a topic or allow their families to learn alongside them.