Curriculum Intent

St Thomas’s History scheme offers a coherently planned sequence of lessons to ensure students have progressively covered the skills and concepts required in the national curriculum. It aims to develop children’s understanding of substantive concepts, which are revisited throughout different units and are identified in the overview below. Historical enquiry skills are built upon progressively throughout the units and include:

• Historical Interpretations
• Historical Investigations
• Chronological Understanding
• Knowledge and Understanding of Events and People in the Past
• Presenting, Organising and Communicating
• Substantive Concepts and Historical Vocabulary

In addition to this, progression of disciplinary concepts is also woven into units and include:

• Continuity and Change
• Cause and Consequence
• Similarities and Differences
• Historical Significance

Primary overview

The coverage of some history in KS1, such as ‘Travel’ and ‘Significant Explorers’, enables children to acquire an understanding of time, events and people within their own living memory as well as their parents’ and grandparents’ memories as well as significant events from further back in time which they are probably already familiar with.

The intent in KS2 is that children work in chronological order on the core British history study units taken from the national curriculum, starting with ‘Stone Age to Iron Age’ in Lower Key Stage 2 and then progressing onto more modern history in Upper Key Stage 2 with the ‘World War II’ unit. This will be repeated for ancient history, starting with ‘Ancient Egypt’ in LKS2, moving on to ‘Ancient Greece’ and ending with ‘the Mayan Civilisation’ in UKS2. The aim is for children to truly develop and embed a sense of time, understand how civilisations were interconnected and to be exposed to a diverse range of history topics. Children start to understand how some historical events occurred concurrently in different locations, e.g. ancient Egypt, ancient Greece and the Stone Age.