History

The intent of Shaw Wood Academy’s history curriculum is to provide our children with a coherent and chronological understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world, in line with the National Curriculum. We aim to achieve this with ambitious curriculum content as well as a diverse range of activities and additional experiences to enrich children’s learning and contribute to their cultural capital. We intend to provide opportunities for our children to build their substantive knowledge and make links in their learning to further develop their understanding of the past, alongside their disciplinary skills. They will be taught in the set sequence as to enable the children to interlink their history skills with their geographical knowledge and understanding of the local area and the world around them. As children progress through school, they will learn about significant events, people and places in their own locality. They will do this by learning about the history of their school and the village of Armthorpe with a strong focus on the mining heritage of the local area throughout. We hope that our curriculum will inspire children’s curiosity about the past, encourage them to ask perceptive questions and think critically whilst contributing to a love of learning that will last beyond their time at Shaw Wood.

Our history curriculum features common themes that the children will build upon as they progress through school. These are known as ‘golden threads’. They include:

• Monarchy and Power including succession and the concept of democracy and autocracy
• Conflict and Disaster including settlement and invasion
• Invention and Exploration
• Civilisation

Over the year we alternate the teaching of history with geography, so over the course of an academic year most year groups will study a range of historical units of work.  Our history lessons in KS1 and KS2 are taught discretely.