Steep Church of England VC Primary School

At Steep, high quality history education helps children to gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It inspires children’s curiosity to know more about the past and encourages them ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.

History at Steep helps children to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

in Key Stage One we help children learn to:

• recount stories accurately and suggest why people and events were important
• discuss the importance of basing their ideas on evidence
• handle and analyse artefacts and ask questions about them and to consider how other ways they might find out answers to their questions
• develop skills of hypothesising, questioning and investigating which they use regularly when studying history
• reflect on the significance of what they study and grow in their insight and thinking

In Key Stage Two we build on this so that children learn to:

• evaluate a range of historical sources and make perceptive deductions about the reliability of sources in answering historical questions
• gain an understanding of change and continuity, understanding the significance of people in a wider historical context 
• identify anachronism becoming aware of different views about the events they study
• use historical terms accurately, making pertinent and valid comparisons between periods.

...and most importantly they learn to love history.