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.
The impact and measure of this is to ensure that children are equipped with historical enquiry skills, knowledge and concepts, in addition to guiding their attitude to historical events, which will enable them to be reflective learners, ready for the secondary school curriculum. Through doing this, we aim to generate an excitement for historical enquiry, to encourage the children to become lifelong learners in the wider world. We hope that the importance placed on our History curriculum, along with the passion that emanates from creative lesson design will highlight and ignite within the children an importance for studying events from the past.
Chaffinch travelled back in time to ancient Egypt and finished off the day creating a museum full of great artefacts. Well done Chaffinch class for your wonderful song too.
Bullfinch enjoyed a visit to St James church to look at the history of this beautiful building. It was a gorgeous spring day for our visit.
The Roman family learning event was a great success. We shared learning and had fun with our families as well as explaining how important parental support is for children's progress. More photos are on the Chaffinch Class Page
Chaffinch's virtual visit to Reading Museum and Silchester Roman Town was really interesting. It was a great way to compare Roman artefacts with modern items like hairpins, baby bottles, shoes and even a mirror. What a great offer by Reading Museum's education team.
Iron age expert - Goldfinch enjoyed learning all about the Iron Age from our visitor, Iron Age Matt. They learnt about the weapons that were used, the most suitable uses for different animal furs and the clothes that were worn and parents were welcomed in so that they could pass on their new knowledge.
Viking day Apr 2022 - exploring a Viking daily life and making comparisons with our lives.
Chaffinch had a fascinating afternoon learning more about Invasions! Sandra Pullen treated us to an afternoon of music, film, photos and information to build on our learning about Anglo Saxon and Viking life. She even had some artefacts for us to explore.
Chaffinch Ancient Egyptian Day: we explored food, dance, costume, writing and maths before opening our museum of homemade artifacts.
KS1 Pupil Voice April 2025
Do you think history is exciting? Why?
Yes, because we looked at different toys.
Yes, it was fun visiting the church.
How do our resources help you to learn?
My teacher uses the board to show us pictures and talk about history. Sometimes we watch videos.
Sometimes we visit places so we can see them for ourselves.
Do we learn about things that happened in our local area in the past? What have we learnt?
We learnt about the history of the church and how to tell if the things there were old or new. We learnt about the stained glass windows and Mrs Fox came in to talk about it. We asked her lots of questions. The church is about 900 years old!
Do you look forward to your next history lesson? Why?
Yes, because we get to be historians and it's interesting.
Yes, because I like to see what life used to be like.
Is there anything you'd still like to learn?
I would like to learn about the Egyptians!
I would like to learn about the Romans next.
KS2 Pupil Voice April 2025
Are our history lessons exciting and interesting? Why?
Y6 Yes, because I enjoyed learning about the Ancient Maya and trying their cacao. I liked writing a letter to a King of Ancient Maya to apply for a job in his Noble team.
Y5 Yes, because we learnt even more stuff this year than in Chaffinch.
Y4 They're exciting because there's something new to do every week.
Y3 Yes, because we learn about things we never saw.
Do you feel we consider peoples views in history?
Y5 Yes, because we discuss everything in groups and think about what people in history thought too.
Y6Yes , because we learn about other peoples theories, like what happened to the Ancient Maya
Y4 Yes, because we answer questions.
Y3 If we're sitting in a circle, we have discussion time.
Are there any resources which help you learn about history?
Y6 We use laptops to research and Blooket to test our knowledge.
Y5 Sometimes we have visitors to help.
Y3 History books and interesting PowerPoints.
Y4 The whiteboard and pictures.
Do you look forward to your next history lesson? Why?
Y5 Yes because we learn new facts every week.
Y6 Yes because history is interesting!
Y3 Yes, because there's always something new to learn in history!
Y4 Yes, because history is great fun!
Do we learn about different civilisations and cultures?
Y5 Yes, I still remember Viking day in Y3!
Y6 We learnt about the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age as well as the Ancient Maya.
Y3 Yes, because there are loads of different time periods to learn about.
Y4 Yes, it's like you go back in time!
If you could make one suggestion for our history lessons, what would it be?
Y5 I would like more lessons!
Y6 We could have more visitors for example someone from Ancient Maya descent.
Y4 We could search for more facts so we could learn even more in our history lessons.
Pupil Voice 2025
Our History leaders asked Chaffinch about their Egyptian Day.
What did you like about the day?
- The activities.
- Making food - it was super fun!
- I liked that we got to do stuff the Egyptians did - it was fun.
- It gives people time to explain what we're learning about.
- You get to dress up and eat the food that they did.
- We got to sing and learn the numbers
How does it help you?
- It helps me learn about the Egyptians.
- It helps me to learn more about history in a fun way.
- I learn more like this.