History

At The Rushmere Park Academy, we believe in providing a rich and immersive skills-based history curriculum for our learners. The strength of our creative curriculum and experienced teachers lead to history skills being taught in a meaningful and purposeful way as part of a larger whole school theme.

Our history curriculum has been designed to be both knowledge-rich and coherently sequenced. It allows children to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of local, British and world history.

The curriculum aims to help children understand how the past is constructed and contested. Children begin by learning about what a historian does, looking at basic sources and simplified perspectives to develop an appreciation and understanding of what it means to be a historian.

Our curriculum introduces the children to a wide variety of men, women and children from the past; from the widely venerated, to the lives of the less well-known who offer us a rich insight into life at the time- from Aristotle to Martin Luther King, from Emmeline Pankhurst to Alan Turing.

As their substantive knowledge grows, children will be able to ask perceptive questions, analyse more complex sources and begin to use their knowledge to develop perspective. Disciplinary concepts, such as continuity and change, cause and consequence and similarity, difference and significance, are explored in every unit, and children are supported to think outside of their current unit of work and apply these concepts across the curriculum. In addition to learning about British and local history, the children will also learn about the history of the wider world. They cover fascinating ancient civilisations, the expansion and dissolutions of empires, and the achievements and atrocities committed by humankind across the ages. The curriculum aims to ignite children’s love for history, preparing them with essential knowledge for their next steps and beyond.