History at SMPS fosters children’s enthusiasm to find out about the past in Britain and the wider world. As children learn about the past, they discover how the past influences the present, what past societies were like and what beliefs and cultures influenced people’s actions.

We are determined that alongside historical knowledge there is also a focus on the development of specific historical skills. High quality teaching of history should encourage children to ask questions, consider evidence, think critically, appreciate different perspectives and develop informed judgements.

At SMPS, we aim to bring history to life by immersing children in realistic experiences both in school, with role-play, themed days and by inviting visitors in, and on exciting educational visits. Our History curriculum is designed to ignite children’s curiosity about the past through a topic-based approach and using hands on experience wherever possible.

We develop the children’s growing sense of chronology, helping them to place the periods they study within an historical time frame. Throughout school the children learn to use a variety of historical sources to gather evidence. These include pictures, photos, documents and artefacts, which will then enable them to present what they find out in a variety of ways.

As History at SMPS covers the knowledge and skills outlined in the National Curriculum through broad, challenging and inspiring topics, our curriculum provision map ensures the progressive coverage of both the required knowledge and the subject specific skills. A topic-based approach is used to deliver the content within a meaningful context and wherever possible cross curricular links are exploited, particularly links with geography, British values and SMSC.

The use of relevant, high -quality texts, both fictional and non-fiction, underpin much of our history curriculum at SMPS. Opportunities for children to read are embedded along side planned opportunities for writing. Historical fiction piques children’s curiosity, provides details about everyday life with visual and contextual clues to how people lived, what their speech was like, how they dressed etc.  Many of the fictional texts introduce children to characters who have different points of view and offers examples of how people deal differently with problems and the complexity of relevant issues. Using a range of texts also informs students about the interpretive nature of history, showing how authors and illustrators deal with an issue in different ways.