History helps children to develop an understanding of the past and how it has shaped the world in which they live today.

From Foundation to Year 6, children progressively develop their chronological understanding, knowledge of the past and the skills needed to investigate and interpret history. They learn to ask questions, examine different sources of evidence and recognise that our understanding of the past is constructed from the evidence available to us.

Chronological Understanding

Children develop an increasingly secure understanding of chronology and the passage of time.

In Foundation, this begins with children's own experiences as they sequence photographs from different stages of their lives and distinguish between past and present.

As children progress, they order events and objects, use dates and increasingly precise historical vocabulary and place periods and events onto timelines. They develop their understanding of BC (Before Christ), AD (Anno Domini), BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era), while beginning to recognise how different historical periods relate to one another.

By the end of Key Stage 2, children use chronological understanding to make connections between periods, identify significant events and dates and describe changes within and across periods of history.

Historical Enquiry

Children learn that historians investigate the past by asking questions and examining evidence.

This begins in Foundation through stories and discussion, as children distinguish between fact and fiction and talk about why things happened.

As they move through school, children encounter an increasing range of historical sources. These include documents, printed materials, photographs, pictures, artefacts, historic buildings, visits to museums and galleries and information gathered from digital sources.

Children learn to ask increasingly thoughtful questions about the past and to select appropriate sources to help them find answers. In Years 5 and 6, they begin to consider the reliability of different sources and undertake their own historical enquiries.

Historical Interpretation

Children develop an understanding that the past can be represented and interpreted in different ways.

Younger children use books, photographs, pictures and artefacts to find out about the past, before beginning to compare different accounts and representations.

As their historical understanding develops, children explore why different versions of the past may exist and recognise that people can represent the same events or ideas differently.

By upper Key Stage 2, children consider different accounts of history, evaluate evidence and think about the reliability of sources. They develop an understanding that people's points of view can affect their interpretation of the past.

Knowledge and Understanding

Children build their knowledge and understanding of people, events, societies and periods in the past.

Beginning with similarities and differences between themselves and others and between past and present, children increasingly use evidence to describe historical events and the lives of people who lived in different periods.

As they progress through Key Stage 2, children consider the causes and consequences of events and begin to recognise connections between different aspects of history. They compare periods and societies and explore how features of the past, including aspects such as religion, houses, society and technology, have changed or influenced life today.

By Year 6, children are expected to select reliable sources, give reasons why changes may have occurred and describe similarities and differences between periods, events and artefacts they have studied. The progression shown across the table on pages 1 and 2 develops these expectations from children's earliest understanding of past and present through to this more analytical historical thinking.

Developing as Historians

Across the curriculum, children progressively learn to approach the past as historians.

They develop their ability to:

• place events and periods within a chronological framework;
• ask questions about the past and investigate possible answers;
• use and compare different historical sources;
• distinguish between evidence and interpretation;
• consider the reliability of historical evidence;
• identify similarities, differences, causes and consequences; and
• make connections between different periods and between the past and the present.

These skills develop alongside children's growing historical knowledge, enabling them to make increasingly informed judgements about the people, events and societies they study.

History Curriculum Overview

Our History Curriculum Overview shows how children's historical knowledge and skills develop progressively from Foundation to Year 6 through chronological understanding, historical enquiry, historical interpretation, and knowledge and understanding.

Please view our History Curriculum Overview below to see the progression of learning across the school.