History at OLM
At OLM, the history offer for our children is hugely ambitious and enables children to develop critical thinking skills and have a genuine interest, enthusiasm and curiosity about history and how past events have shaped the world in which we live today.
Our history curriculum inspires pupils to be curious and creative thinkers who develop a complex knowledge of local and national history and the history of the wider world. We want pupils to develop the confidence to think critically, ask questions, and be able to explain and analyse historical evidence. We build an awareness of significant events and individuals in global, British and local history and recognise how things have changed over time. Our history curriculum supports children to appreciate the complexity of people’s lives, the diversity of societies and the relationships between different groups.
History Years 1 & 2
History is taught every other half term in blocks in years 1 and 2.
At OLM, the Kapow scheme of work was selected because it focuses on:
- Substantive concepts: discovering and understanding the driving forces behind events in human history.
- Disciplinary concepts: building the understanding necessary to become young historians.
- Historical enquiry: developing analytical and investigative methods for approaching historical questions.
History Years 3-6
Six history topics are taught across the year in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6.
At OLM we make use of the resources form the Opening Worlds curriculum written and designed by Christine Counsell and Steve Mastin. Opening Worlds is a knowledge-rich humanities programme. The programme meets and substantially exceeds the demand of the National Curriculum for history. It is designed to incorporate four closely related curricular attributes – scope, rigour, coherence and sequencing. Scope and rigour matters because the subject must properly reflect the wide reference and academic practices, outside of school, to which the subject refers. Coherence and sequencing ensure that the material organised so that pupils use earlier material to access to later material and so that pupils start to see how everything connects within a subject. Progression of knowledge and skills has been carefully mapped and core knowledge has been identified for each unit, enabling children to build on prior learning and develop the skills of a historian.
