A Bunbury Historian
Bunbury ‘Historians’ let their light shine brightly.....
At the heart of everything is a personalised approach to each unique individual as part of our Christian Community. The strong family ethos ensures that all children and staff feel valued, respected and grow in self-confidence. Enthusiastic and caring staff with high expectations, demonstrate care of the whole child. Through God’s guidance we encourage each and every child to let their light shine.
Article 29: Children’s education should develop each child’s personality, talents and abilities to the fullest. It should encourage children to respect others, human rights and their own and other cultures. It should also help them learn to live peacefully, protect the environment and respect other people.
The curriculum at Bunbury is constructed in order to provide systems of learning and lived experiences that enable the pupils at our school to develop and grow as learners, empowering all children to fulfil the school’s motto: ‘Let Your Light Shine’. The curriculum is focused on growing the whole person, through a broad range of subjects and wider opportunities. Its intent is to empower pupils in learning; to facilitate efficient acquisition of knowledge and to provide clear steps for progression and to develop a rich cultural capital. Through high-quality texts, resources and experiences, it aims to inspire our pupils to develop inquiring minds and to have a world view that is full of hope, with a knowledge of the love of Jesus. The curriculum meets the needs of all our children through a loving, nurturing environment, rich in social, spiritual and moral learning. It equips our pupils with the tools that will enable them to succeed in academic, professional and personal contexts throughout their lives
Our Curriculum Policy details our intent behind our curriculum, how we implement it and our desired impact. At RCSAT, the school curriculum consists of all those activities designed or encouraged within its organisational framework to provide the intellectual, emotional, personal, social, spiritual and physical development of all its pupils. It includes not only the subject specific curriculum but also the ‘informal’ programme of enrichment and extra-curricular activities.
The curriculum at RCSAT, is firmly rooted in and stems directly from our Vision, Mission and Core Values;
Our Vision – ‘Let your Light shine’ Matthew v5:16
Our Mission – ‘A Caring Christian Family Where We Grow Together’
Our Core Values –
WE aim to create an enjoyable, inclusive, safe and nurturing environment that allows all children to develop spiritually, morally and socially.
– every child is a child of God, made to contribute to our world.
WE aim to create an inspiring environment, which encourages enthusiasm for lifelong learning and establishes an expectation of high standards.
– knowing the way, showing the way and going the way.
WE aim to encourage caring, sensitive and inclusive attitudes where individuals feel secure, valued and respected by others.
– like Jesus showed us through his teachings
WE aim to provide a broad and connected curriculum which challenges and develops the potential of each child.
– as Jesus needed his disciples to support and guide, so we look to others with more knowledge
WE aim to develop a positive relationship between home, school and our wider community
- as a family – as brothers and sisters
As historians, we 'Let our lights shine' by exploring how the past influences the present, what past societies were like, how these societies organised their politics, and what beliefs and cultures influenced people’s actions. As they do this, pupils develop a chronological framework for their knowledge of significant events and people. They see the diversity of human experience, and understand more about themselves as individuals and members of society. What they learn can influence their decisions about personal choices, attitudes and values.
The aim of history teaching at Bunbury Aldersey CE Primary School is to stimulate the children’s interest and understanding about the life of people who lived in the past, and develop an understadnig of this imapcts our lives now.
We teach children a sense of chronology, and through this they develop a sense of identity, and a cultural understanding based on their historical heritage. They learn to value their own and other people’s cultures in modern multicultural Britain and, by considering how people lived in the past, they are better able to make their own life choices today. In our school history makes a significant contribution to citizenship education by teaching about how Britain developed as a democratic society. We teach children to understand how events in the past have influenced our lives today; we also teach them to investigate these past events and, by so doing, to develop the skills of enquiry, analysis, interpretation and problem-solving.
The children learn that the past is represented in different ways and how to find out about the past from an appropriate range of sources of information. The children are encouraged to ask and answer questions, and to organize and communicate their feelings in a variety of ways.
We intend for our history curriculum to enable pupils to acquire a comprehensive and coherent understanding of thehistory of Britain, as well as the wider world. We wish to encourage a sense of curiosity and a desire to learn more about thepast. In order to achieve this, we strive to equip pupils with the necessary skills to ask insightful questions, think critically,evaluate evidence, analyse arguments, and form perspective and judgement. Through History, we aim to provide pupils the opportunities to understand the intricacy of human existence, mechanisms of change, differences of societies and therelationships between different groups; as well as their identity and challenges of their time.
Through our study of History, we aim to ensure that all pupils:
- know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
- know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind
- gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
- understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
- understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
- gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts: understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religiousand social history; and between short- and long-term timescales
Curriculum structure & sequencing
We structure our history curriculum in such a way that the youngest children study history in the form of concepts understandableto them – via their family and recent living memories. From this we move through key periods of UK and world history focusing on chronological understanding, historical enquiry, historical understanding and historical oracy. Every year group covers prior learning at the start of each unit of study before clear way points navigate pupils’ learning towards clearly defined end goals ofstudy. Golden threads run through each year group through themes of legacy, social diversity, monarchy, exploration and invasion
Content & concepts
We appreciate the study of History is much more than remembering dates and names; firmly believing the study of how we lived inthe past is key to successful living in the present and future. We plan a bespoke History curriculum and adopt active learning techniques where children can develop independent and collaborative learning skills which complement the historical skills we wish to impart.
Enrichment and personal development:
We believe History is at its most engaging when it is brought to life and meaningful to children. Content is planned to meet the requirements set out in the National Curriculum, whilst also giving children a wealth ofopportunity to study local history in order that they see how their area and communities have changed over time. Study issupplemented through engaging educational visits, visits from History experts and people from the past; alongside immersive and innovative digital resources.
Assessment and next steps
We assess History in a variety of ways, giving pupils the opportunity to explain their reasoning and metacognition of a topic as well as their accumulation of knowledge. This may be done through practical exercises, group tasks, quizzes or discussion. We value developing Historical oracy and place great emphasis on children being able to explain how, where and why; understanding the study and application of Historical skills will serve our pupils well in their future studies across the wider curriculum.
At Bunbury, our history curriculum aims to develop historical skills and concepts which are transferable to whatever period of history is being studied and will equip children for future learning. These key historical skills and concepts, which are revisited throughout our connected curriculum are: Historical Interpretations; Understanding Chronology; To Investigate and interpret the past; Build an overview of world history and Local history; Knowledge and Understanding of Events, People and Changes in the Past; Presenting, Organising and Communicating. For KS1, our curriculum can be covered chronologically in reverse to allow a full opportunity for children to really grasp the difficult concept of the passing of time. Starting with changed in living memory, moving onto events beyond living memory. This prepares children for the chronological work they will do in KS2. The intent in lower KS2 is that children can work in chronological order from ancient history such as ‘Iron Age to Stone Age’ and then progress onto Ancient Greece. Upper KS2 allows children to repeat and embed this sequence of chronology with a wider selection of ancient history such as ‘Early Islamic Civilisations’ and ‘Stone Age’ through to more modern history such as ‘World War II’. The repeat in KS2 of chronological order from ancient to modern allows for children to truly develop and embed a sense of time and how civilisations were interconnected. Children start to understand how some historical events occurred concurrently in different locations, e.g. Ancient Egypt and the Stone Age
.We have identified a set of key historical concepts or ‘golden threads’, that children will repeatedly revisit throughout their time at Bunbury Aldersey. Our golden threads are:
- Chronology
- Invasion and settlement
- Society
- People of the past
Each unit will not include every 'thread', but over a year, children will visit each one more than once
