History At Coppice
Intent
At Coppice Primary School, we believe that high-quality history lessons inspire children to be curious learners who want to know more about the past and to think and act as historians. Our school’s intent is to enrich every child’s school experience and create an environment where they are encouraged to succeed and be the best they can be. Enrichment is a key part of History at Coppice Primary School, whether it is inviting visitors into our school or by educational visits. Ultimately, this leads to the growth of new forms of cultural capital that makes a difference in individual mindsets and shapes the future. By linking learning to a range of topics, children have opportunities to investigate and interpret the past, understand chronology, build an overview of Britain’s past as well as that of the wider world, and to be able to communicate historically.
Implementation
The history curriculum at Coppice Primary is carefully planned and structured to ensure that current learning is linked to previous learning and that the school’s approaches are informed by current pedagogy. The impact on our children will be the following essential characteristics:
- An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past;
- The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences;
- The ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources;
- The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry;
- A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning;
- A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics;
- A developing sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in history, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. History is taught as part of a half-termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. It is well planned to be a sequential set of lessons, which has an end point built in. At Coppice Primary School, we ensure that history has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences. Our History curriculum is designed to be broad and balanced, which gives children prompts, provocations and possibilities designed to develop creativity and generate ideas that gets children excited about learning.
Impact
Our History Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes;
- A planned end point for the children to see their own progression;
- Pupil discussions about their learning.
Year Group Expectations
In Year 1, children will learn about:
- Toys from the past and comparing these to toys in the present
- Exploring Kings and Queens of the past starting from Edward the Conqueror.
- Exploring what holidays were like in the past.
Click on the links above to see the assessment expectations in Year 1.
In Year 2, children will learn about:
- Florence Nightingale.
- Ernest Shackleton and his expeditions to the Arctic.
- The Great Fire of London.
- Comparing transport today and in the past.
Click on the links above to see the assessment expectations in Year 2.
In Year 3, children will learn about:
- Modern Greece
- Ancient Greece
- Stone Age
- Stone Age to Bronze Age
- Romans
Click on the links above to see the assessment expectations for Year 3.
In Year 4, children will learn about:
- Crime and punishment through the ages.
- Invaders and Settlers, Saxons and Vikings.
- Mayan Civilisation.
Click here to see the assessment expectations for Year 4.
In Year 5, children will learn about:
- The Industrial Revolution
- Ancient Egypt.
Click here to see the assessment expectations for Year 5.
In Year 6, children will learn about:
- Shakespeare's England and Henry VIII.
- World War 2.
- Christopher Columbus.
Click on the links above to see assessment expectations for Year 6.
History in Action at Coppice
We love investigating the past at Coppice. Here are some photos of us learning through enquiry and developing our substantive and disciplinary knowledge!
What do our children think about History at Coppice?
In a recent pupil voice survey (July 2023), Coppice pupils had the following to say about History...
"It's the best" - Year 2 pupil
"We get to know how it would feel if we were in the past" - Year 2 pupil
"I absolutely love History. I think it's the best lesson. I love finding out about things. I also read books about History." - Year 3 pupil
"I love History because every half term we learn something new" - Year 4 pupil
"We go on trips like to Derby museum and we hold artefacts from the past - it's so interesting." - Year 5 pupil
Information for Parents
Coming soon
Special Events Coming Up
Year Two will be taking part in an online workshop to bring their learning about the Great Fire of London to life!
In the Summer term, Year Four will be experiencing a Roman day. This will help them to experience what life was really like in the Roman age. They are very excited!