History | Margaret Wix Primary School

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History

What does a historian look like at Margaret Wix Primary School?

An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes.
The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.
The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgments.
A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics

Intent – why are we teaching this?

At Margaret Wix, it is our intention to provide an inspiring history curriculum which stimulates all of our pupils in investigating questions about people and events in the past. We want this to enable them to better understand their lives today and to equip them with the necessary skills for life in multi-cultural Britain. With the support of Connected History, we aim to develop a wide range of critical thinking skills which enable children to distinguish between fact and subjectivity when it comes to making judgements about the past.

We hope to develop in our children a sense of curiosity and fascination about the past of Britain and the wider world. Our history curriculum is broad and balanced in terms of subject content. For example, we study British history from the Stone Age to the Norman invasion of 1066 as well as enquiries focusing on the achievements of ancient civilisations such as the Maya, the Shang Dynasty and Ancient Greece.

Our curriculum is varied and relevant. The children undertake a selection of historical enquiries that extend their knowledge and understanding beyond 1066. For example, they evaluate the significance of the Battle of Britain and the impact of the British Empire.

The Margaret Wix community is diverse and we understand the vital need for representation within our teaching. We ensure diversity across the curriculum: careful thought and planning has gone into selecting whose stories we tell and how they are told. Our curriculum has been re-examined and we have endeavoured to reduce the western bias. We strive to ensure that BAME pupils see themselves reflected in our curriculum, all year round. We call our personalised curriculum ‘The Wix Way’. In history, this includes learning about significant BAME individuals from throughout history. We focus on ancient civilisations, such as the Shang Dynasty, that relate to individuals within our school context. We have aimed to de-colonise our curriculum to ensure all are represented accurately, for example teaching about the British Empire as invading rather than exploring.

The EEF 'five-a-day' underpins all we do for our SEND learners in History. As part of The Wix Way this means that small tweaks to the way we teach History for all children could make a significant, positive difference for the pupils with SEND in our school.

Implementation – how are we teaching this?

At Margaret Wix, learning is structured through big question led enquiries about relevant historical topics, places and themes. Through enquiry children build subject knowledge and understanding and become increasingly adept at critical thinking and using specialised vocabulary.

Learning is interactive and practical where possible. Children have the opportunity to work independently, in pairs and also in groups of different sizes both inside and outside the classroom. Whenever possible children are provided with historical evidence, such as photographs, paintings, artefacts, films and narratives to analyse. Children record their work in various ways, including concept mapping, annotated diagrams. PowerPoint, different writing genres and improvised drama. This is to ensure that knowledge becomes embedded so that children can build on what they know and understand.

Our curriculum recognises the importance of the local area with a number of investigations involving observation, recording, presentation, interpretation and the evaluation of significant people, places and events locally.

We implement the 'five-a-day' strategy from the EEF within the teaching of History in variety of ways.

The five strategies identified as having strong evidence for their effectiveness in supporting pupils with SEND which we use to underpin The Wix Way:

1. Explicit instruction

Explicit instruction refers to a range of teacher-led approaches, focused on teacher demonstration followed by guided practice and independent practice. Explicit instruction is not just “teaching by telling” or “transmission teaching”

Examples:

Teacher modelling self-regulation and thought processes is helpful. Support learners by a step by step approach of recording ideas in a variety of ways.
Language is always clear and consistent use key vocabulary.
Using visual aids and concrete examples promotes discussion and links in learning.

2. Cognitive and metacognitive strategies

Cognitive strategies are skills like memorisation techniques or subject specific strategies learning. Metacognitive strategies help pupils plan and evaluate their learning. Teachers actively talk through their thinking and reasoning out loud to support children’s understanding of how to plan and execute simple achievable tasks.

Examples:

Chunking the task will support pupils with SEND – this may be through instructions on a whiteboard, step by step modelling, real life examples which helps reduce distractions to avoid overloading working memory.
Prompt sheets with pictures that help pupils to evaluate their progress, with ideas for further support.

3. Scaffolding

‘Scaffolding’ is a metaphor for temporary support that is removed when it is no longer required. Initially, a teacher would provide enough support so that pupils can successfully complete tasks that they could not do independently.

Examples:

Support could be visual, verbal, or written.
Children need to have key vocabulary with pictures to support their knowledge and knowledge organiser discussion and understanding.
Multi-sensory approaches teaching including; role play, visual, auditory and kinaesthetic.
Provide opportunities for orally rehearsing their learning using different oracy opportunities. Eg using sentence stems, speaking frames, concept cartoons and talk tactics to enable all pupils’ access learning.
Scaffolding discussion of different learning work: promoting prediction, questioning, clarification and summarising

4. Flexible grouping

Flexible grouping describes when pupils are allocated to smaller groups based on the individual needs that they currently share with other pupils. Such groups can be formed for an explicit purpose and disbanded when that purpose is met

Examples:

Allocating temporary groups can allow teachers to set up opportunities for collaborative learning, for example to work with a learning partner, mixed ability group work, independently carry out a skill, developing a new concept.
Pre-teaching key vocabulary to be used in History lessons to enhance group discussion is helpful when learning new techniques or evaluating the work.

5. Use technology

Technology can assist teacher modelling. Through the use of videos, artefacts and pictures and audio media children can have a better understanding of the content.

Examples:

Use a visualiser to model worked examples, modelling or sharing good examples from peers.
Recording using alternatives to written recording are offered, eg drawing, scribing, word processing, images, video and voice recording.

Impact – what is the effect on the pupils?

Children at Margaret Wix will demonstrate a positive attitude to learning and use and apply skills across the curriculum, making meaningful connection. The will have the confidence to demonstrate the knowledge they have retained over time and demonstrate a readiness for the next stage of their learning. Each half termly enquiry sets clear objectives and outcomes for the children in terms of knowledge and understanding and skills acquisition.

When assessing each child, evidence is drawn from wide range of sources, such as interaction with pupils during discussions and related questioning, practical activities such as model making and role play drama, the communication of field work data and writing in different genres. The outcomes of each enquiry inform the teacher's understanding of each child and help them to plan future learning accordingly.

At the end of each year we make a summative judgement about the achievement of each pupil against the subject learning goals for history in that year, deciding upon a 'best fit' judgement as to whether the pupil has achieved and embedded the expected learning goals, exceeded expectations or is still working towards the goals. This is used as the basis of reporting progress to parents.