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WORDSWORTH PRIMARY SCHOOL

History

How we teach history at Wordsworth Primary School

At Wordsworth, we encourage our children to examine the past, relevant to their age and understanding of the world, through the medium of historical enquiry and the use of practical resources and evidence. The long term curriculum journey includes historical knowledge and understanding of local, national and global significance.

We aim to develop the children’s conceptual understanding of time so that they begin to understand that the past has many different facets with each era being different from the next, but that there are many links we can make with our own lives and experiences. We also address and correct misconceptions about the past giving pupils the opportunity to see how and why different versions of the past differ.  

Our ambition at Wordsworth Primary School is to produce confident historians, who question their own understanding of concepts and the period they are studying, and are able to create links throughout their academic career to previously studied topics, as well as their own lives today.

What you will see in the classroom:

In our classrooms, you will see children keen to understand and question the reasons, rights, wrongs and reliability of historical topics and concepts. Teachers use a wide array of resources and sources, from practical resources that encourage children to adopt a kinaesthetic appreciation of the past, to digital resources that help immerse our children using an interactive approach. Discussions, stories, practical activities, and exploration of artefacts are some of the variety of approaches seen in history lessons. Tasks are differentiated to ensure children of all abilities access and achieve that lesson’s outcome. History is a process of enquiry, the search for evidence, and the examination of this evidence by sorting, evaluating and weighing it. This can be a simple explanation of how we know a toy train is old in Y1, through to an analysis of fragments of pot evidence when studying the role of women in Ancient Greece in Y6.

At Wordsworth, our children are enthusiastic and happy historians, with a desire to discover the truth, question what they find and draw conclusions independently.