“The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

At Brackenwood Junior School, our history curriculum aims to inspire our children’s curiosity and stimulate an interest and a detailed understanding of past events and how they have changed the world and where we live. Through the teaching of History, we endeavour to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as the children’s own identity and the challenges of their time. Our curriculum provides children with opportunities to ask questions, think critically, evaluate evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and make a judgement. Through history, links are made with citizenship to develop an understanding and appreciation of their identity and cultural background, whilst building tolerance and patience towards other cultures in our multi-cultural society – the British values are weaved throughout the history curriculum. Children will learn about how the people of the past have influenced and shaped the country we live in, they will learn to value diversity and explore democracy and the rule of law throughout different time periods. We believe that teaching History in this way is important in broadening children's horizons, challenging preconceived ideas and developing life skills in order to prepare them for high school and beyond. At Brackenwood Juniors we aim to deepen children’s knowledge of history, including international, national and local area, enabling the children to see history as something that they can feel a part of.

History at Brackenwood Junior School is taught by focusing on threads that flow through different periods of History, such as repeated vocabulary (settlement, migration, invasion etc), significant people (their impact on their time) and substantive concepts (religion, empire, government etc). All lessons begin with retrieving prior learning, revisiting of knowledge helps to strengthen the memory, make links with other units and makes the learning ‘sticky’. During lessons, children are encouraged to refer to the timelines in their books identifying the chronology of each historical time period. Lesson and learning are supported by good quality sources (artefacts or photo images). Knowledge organisers help to aid the retention of learning, provide a summary of the facts and have a glossary of vocabulary for each unit taught, across all year groups. To support engagement in learning further, teachers plan exciting and interactive trips or visitors throughout the year, enhancing the children’s understanding, with hands on primary sources.