History at Lamberhead Green Academy
In an ever-changing world and an ever-changing society, we always look back to the past for the answers. The study of history enables us to develop a better understanding of the world we live. Looking back on the world through a range of various sources helps create an appreciation and understanding of current events. History provides a platform for people to understand other cultures whilst also providing a sense of identity.
For us to enable our children to be capable and competent historians, we must provide our children with the opportunity to think critically; devise investigative questions and construct valid opinions through understanding.
At Orrell Lamberhead Green Academy we want to support, inspire, and prepare our children to be historians.
Support: We recognise the importance of History within the curriculum and what it can offer our children. During your child’s journey here at Orrell Lamberhead Green, we quickly identify each individual child’s starting points within history using the Early Learning Goals strand: ‘Understanding the world’ (EYFS Development Matters 2020 statements and ELGs). This enables our highly trained staff to ensure your child’s historical journey starts with the correct foundations. Our history curriculum offers lots of opportunities for quality speaking and listening through the use of our excellent resources which create discussions and debates within the lessons. We know it is incredibly important for your child to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to be a life-long historian. With our vast array of quality historical texts, stories, and artworks, we believe these tools will ensure your child will acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to be a historian. This will also include your child’s ability to connect emotionally and socially to history through our identified historical icons such as Emmeline Pankhurst or Alan Turing. We pride ourselves within history of regularly reviewing your child’s learning journey. We accomplish this through consistent retrieval practise within the topics.
Inspire: We want all our children to realise the opportunities that history can provide for their future success in life. Within the history curriculum, we have identified a broad range of experiences that will enthuse your child. These experiences include school trips, in school speakers (from past pupils) residentials, classroom experiences as well as virtual experiences too. Our main aim in history, is to give your child an appreciation of who they are and an understanding of where they come from. We believe this promotion will create new interests within your child and will help them to identify new talents they may not have previously known existed within themselves.
Prepare: Your child will directly gain from a careful and deliberately planned curriculum which has been personalised to their locality. Not only do we delve into world history but also local history too. Thus, creating an appreciation of the history that Wigan has to offer. We take a real sense of pride in knowing our historical curriculum will prepare your child for the next steps in their education through onto high school and beyond.
Through our historical curriculum, our children will be able to:
· Understand and use a wide historical vocabulary and key terms.
Ø Within our lessons, we will provide children with opportunities to use, understand and retain ne vocabulary that will allow them to progress within life.
· Know that the history they have previously learned can help them understand the history they are leaning now and will help them understand the history they will learn.
Ø Provide the children with a chronological pathway through time to deepen and root their understanding in the past.
· Use this knowledge to make connections and contrasts, ask historically valid questions, and analyse patterns/trends.
Ø Each lesson will allow our children to create strong schemas and promote a growth mind set.
· Write as historians, creating their own recounts, narratives, and analysis.
Ø Outcomes will enable children to take their skills and knowledge and create, design or write with their newly acquired information. Children must not only gain new knowledge, but they must use it in a constructive format.
· Be able to use both primary and secondary sources to learn about the past.
Ø Using artefacts, books, newspapers, computers, documents, legislations and other sources of historical information. We will allow our children to explore history through reason and facts.
· Understand why some people interpret events or facts differently.
Ø We will endeavour to provide our children with multiple viewpoints of history. It is important our children understand other’s viewpoints of the same historical events. This will provide our children with an unbiased understanding thus allowing them to create their own viewpoints.
· Gain historical perspective, by considering contexts such as location, economics, politics, religion, and key points in time.
Ø For our children to really understand history they must draw on their knowledge from other areas of the curriculum.
· Enhance their own historical experiences and opportunities through local historical visits.
Ø History must not only be research and studied but it must also be experienced. Where possible, we ensure our children will experience history through residential trips, visits to other complexes and internal experiences from visitors.
Ø Through the understanding of cultural capital, our children will be prepared for their own future success.