History

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History

at St Luke's CE Primary School

We want our pupils to have a thorough knowledge of Britain's past, and of ancient societies elsewhere in the world. We want to embed their understanding of chronology, get them to know about famous, inspirational figures from history, as well as make links to Geography and where these things happened. We want pupils to know about how societies have developed and what contributions these societies made to British – and world- culture.

We want pupils to understand key historical concepts, to which end our History curriculum is based around the first order concept threads of Communication, Community, Culture and Crime & Punishment. These concept threads help children to not only make links between historical periods, but also to understand what changes have occurred through time & why, and they have been specifically chosen to reflect the community our children come from, as well as linking to our 5 School Values of
Faith, Wisdom, Aspiration, Compassion and Community.

Community - This area of Salford has a strong sense of local community and we want to get our children to relate this to our studies of History- in Early Years and Key Stage One in particular, children make a lot of links with the locality and, of course, the famous artist LS Lowry who lived in Salford and was inspired by the industrial landscapes of the time. This enables their cognition by putting new concepts alongside familiar ones and connecting the two, before moving on to more abstract historical concepts in Key Stage 2. ‘Community’ is also one of our core School Values and it is revisited daily, further strengthening the pupils’ knowledge of what a community is and how it functions.

Crime & Punishment – Linked to our school value of ‘Compassion’, pupils will come to learn how criminals are treated with greater compassion in modern society, as well as the importance of organisations such as the police in keeping society safe. With many of our pupils coming from an area of high deprivation that suffers from a disproportionately high level of crime and disorder (ref. Salford Community Safety Strategy 2020-2023), it is important that our pupils are informed of the social contract that is needed for a community to prosper.

Communication - Due to a number of socio-economic factors (reference our SEF Jan. 2024), many of our pupils have low starting points regarding communication and we hope that, by a focus on communication in History, pupils will understand the importance of communicating well and how that has created social change and driven progress. Allied to our work in English and throughout our school community, we believe we can make a substantial difference to our pupils’ outcomes in this area.

Culture - Similar to our approach in ‘Community’, pupils begin their historical journey by linking what is familiar and what is new to them. In Key Stage One, they compare toys from today with toys from the past, then they begin to investigate more historically distant periods such as Bonfire Night, before looking at the achievements of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans in
Key Stage 2. We want pupils to understand that it is the culture of these civilisations that enabled their greatest
achievements and why they are still influential today. This also links well with our School Values of ‘Wisdom’ and ‘Aspiration’
and how these qualities can create profound change or development.

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Our History Curriculum
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