History

At Kader Academy, our history curriculum aims to provide a high-quality education that equips children with a deep understanding of Britain’s past and the wider world, highlighting how history shapes their own lives. We strive to foster a love of learning and curiosity through engaging activities that bring historical voices and stories into the classroom, enabling children to make meaningful connections and comparisons across time periods. Our curriculum is designed to offer a balance of substantive knowledge (understanding key historical events and figures) and disciplinary knowledge (teaching children how historians investigate and interpret the past). We provide a personalised curriculum that focuses on local history, offering real-life experiences that broaden children’s perspectives and connect them to their community. By encouraging open-ended learning and divergent thinking, we empower every child to think historically, explore ideas and achieve their personal potential.

While following the National Curriculum and the Early Years framework, all children will be provided with a carefully sequenced set of lessons which have been planned for progression and depth of knowledge and skills, including consideration as to how learners will be supported in line with our school’s commitment to inclusion. They will include memorable learning experiences both in and out of the classroom (access to artefacts and sources of evidence, both primary and secondary; visits to museums and places of interest; listening and interacting with stories from the past etc.).

These progressive lessons have been planned and sequenced to ensure children are able to build rich, connected schemas in their minds, allowing them to build upon and embed prior knowledge. These lessons are built around 5 ‘big ideas’ of history which our children are explicitly exposed to:

• Power and rule
• Civilisations
• Legacy
• Conflict and warfare
• Everyday life

The children’s learning and knowledge develops constantly through revisiting prior knowledge, whether that is from the previous topic or previous years’ learning. D.A.R.T (Dedicated Active Recall Time) is used in each lesson to ensure that prior knowledge is recapped and built upon from the current topic and previous topics covered.

Classroom learning is supported by knowledge organisers which structure the key knowledge that children should retain from each topic.

Alongside continuous formative assessment, children are able to showcase their learning through an end of topic assessment which allows teachers to build up an ongoing judgement regarding pupil progress and attainment.