APPROACH

At Catherine Infant School, History is taught through a carefully planned and coherent learning journey across all year groups. Our curriculum offers a broad, balanced, and differentiated approach that is inclusive and engaging for all pupils. There is a strong emphasis of facilitating oracy within all history lessons.

We adopt a topic-based approach to teaching history, enabling pupils to develop both their enquiry skills and historical knowledge. These oracy driven skills are transferable and designed to lay the foundation for life-long historical thinking. Pupils are encouraged to become independent, reflective, and evaluative thinkers, developing empathy and understanding for how people lived in the past. This approach nurtures a sense of curiosity, respect, and awareness of different cultures, societies, and historical contexts.

Through a range of planned oracy outcomes, pupils are given regular opportunities to expand their vocabulary, engage in meaningful discussions, ask thoughtful questions, and collaborate with their peers. History at Catherine Infant School is inclusive and accessible to all, regardless of individual starting points. Historical knowledge and skills are taught progressively and revisited to ensure that learning is retained and embedded in pupils’ long-term memory.

We evaluate the effectiveness of our History curriculum in the following ways:

• Learning walks will demonstrate that pupils are motivated, engaged, and able to access tasks. They will take ownership of their learning through meaningful interactions and participation.

• Pupil voices will show that learners can confidently use key vocabulary, articulate their learning, and share which aspects of the topic they found most engaging.

Topic books/floor book scrutiny will provide evidence of high-quality work, showing clear progress from pupils’ individual starting points, aligned with the school’s History skills progression framework.

EYFS (indoor/outdoor)

In the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), History is thoughtfully planned in alignment with the Development Matters Framework 2021, with a primary focus on the specific area of learning: Understanding the World, alongside the prime area: Communication and Language. Pupils are provided with meaningful opportunities to build foundational historical understanding through the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning. Our approach includes:

• Creating opportunities for pupils to ask and respond to 'how' and 'why' questions related to stories or real-life events.
• Encouraging pupils to identify and discuss similarities and differences.
• Promoting early research skills by supporting pupils in retrieving information from books, digital sources, and conversations with others.
• Planning and teaching are continuously informed by pupils’ developmental needs, ensuring historical content is both purposeful and relevant to their lived experiences.

 

Indoor Learning

All EYFS classrooms are designed to facilitate high-quality discussions among pupils, sparked by weekly teacher-led inputs connected to focused topics such as families, transport, story characters, and the royal family. Each term, pupils engage with carefully selected materials including PowerPoints, big books, and small-world figures that highlight themes of change over time. These resources support understanding of demographic differences and similarities, helping pupils relate to each other’s experiences while developing a global perspective.

Daily oracy-driven talk opportunities in the classroom further enhance pupils’ understanding of chronological concepts, particularly the use of past, present, and future tenses.

Outdoor Learning

Outdoor provision plays a key role in extending adult-led interactions into more dynamic and exploratory contexts. This provision is carefully planned to include resources that are both relevant and engaging, supporting topic learning through imaginative play. Activities often involve pupils taking on roles of significant historical figures—such as members of the royal family—or using puppets and visual prompts to stimulate discussion and curiosity.

Through these quality interactions, pupils begin to develop an understanding of chronology, applying their knowledge of time-related concepts in a natural, play-based environment. Learning is supported through skilled adult guidance, ensuring incidental moments are maximised to reinforce historical thinking and vocabulary.

 

KS1

In Key Stage 1, the History curriculum enables pupils to develop a deeper understanding of time, significant events, and notable individuals within and beyond living memory. Building on the foundations established in EYFS, historical skills are revisited and reinforced to support the retention of prior knowledge while introducing new and enriching content.

Our carefully designed curriculum provides structured opportunities for pupils to explore historical concepts and understand the passing of time. Pupils are encouraged to place the events they study within a chronological framework, supporting their grasp of historical sequence and context.

Each year group follows a clearly sequenced series of lessons that offer narrative, coherence, and progression. The explicit teaching of key vocabulary is embedded within each lesson, and this vocabulary is reinforced through classroom displays and supplementary resources. These tools ensure that pupils have regular opportunities to revisit and consolidate their learning in a meaningful and incidental way.

The curriculum is thoughtfully organised to reflect topics that are both relevant to pupils’ experiences and inspire curiosity about the past. This approach nurtures a love of learning and encourages pupils to become enthusiastic and reflective young historians.

Over the course of the academic year, each year group explores two main historical topics:

Year 1:

Pupils begin by studying the changes in toys over time, helping them connect with history through familiar, tangible objects. Later in the year, they explore the significant historical event of the Great Fire of London.

Year 2:

Pupils initially explore a comparative study of the lives and achievements of explorers Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong. This is then followed by a focus on local history through King Richard III.