Subject Leaders: Mrs Petricca, Miss Orford

“A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.”

Robert Heinlein

At St Mary’s Blackbrook we wish to enable children to become historians in their own right. It is of the upmost importance to us that our children develop a love of history and the curiosity to know more about the past and how people’s lives have shaped Britain and the world throughout the ages.

We aim to do this by supporting the children in thinking critically, drawing comparisons between different time periods and their own lives, making connections and weighing evidence gathered from a variety of sources. They will develop their ability to listen to, and value, the opinions of others as well as respecting people’s beliefs and cultures.

Nursery Development Matters

Begin to make sense of their own life story 

Continue to make sense of their own life story and family’s history 

Understand the key features of the life cycle of a plant and animal 

Reception (ELG)

The strands of the History National Curriculum

• know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
• know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind
• gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
• understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
• understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
• gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.