History Curriculum Intent – Click on the link to view the curriculum intent

Cultural Capital

Pickhurst Academy is committed to ensuring all of our pupils are equipped with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. Our curriculum and provision ensure that all our pupils acquire the essential knowledge they need to be educated citizens. We ensure that we are introducing them to the best that has been thought and said, and it is our mission to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement. We want all of our pupils to leave Pickhurst, by the end of KS2, with aspirational goals for their future, without any limitations. We have carefully considered four domains for promoting and improving each child’s level of cultural capital, based on research by Bourdieu (1986). We believe that the more cultural capital a child has, the more likely they are to succeed in life and reach their potential.

Intent

Rising Stars History provides a history curriculum that is ambitious and designed for all pupils. It is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively providing the necessary knowledge and skills for the pupils’ future to empower them to take their role as informed and active citizens in the 21st century. Its emphasis is not just on historical knowledge but also skills and concepts. It has the same challenging academic ambitions for all pupils. They all work from a shared starting point to answer the same key questions. The content provides pupils with a clear understanding of how people lived in the past and what they believed to be important. Within the units there are recurring themes such as settlement, migration and religion which builds a stronger web of knowledge to ensure it sticks. Engaging with challenging themes will enable pupils to connect with what is happening in the world around them. It will enable them to engage in debate about what is happening today and use the past to inform those opinions. Over the course of the scheme, pupils will develop an understanding of how we know about the past through a range of sources of evidence and with increasing confidence will consider their utility and reliability. Following the scheme will ensure pupils benefit from a curriculum that enriches their lives and broadens their cultural experiences. This will lead to a better understanding of culture and heritage and a desire to engage further with these areas.

Implementation

Rising Stars History is designed to be delivered by non-specialists, with core historical knowledge identified and explained throughout. A breadth of teaching approaches appropriate to the content and desired learning outcomes are used to engage all pupils and enable them to not just acquire knowledge but to apply it in meaningful contexts. Appropriate discussion is recommended as a means of checking pupils’ learning systematically, identifying misconceptions and providing immediate feedback. Questions and tasks to stretch and challenge the most able pupils are incorporated where appropriate. Revisiting ideas and concepts in different, more challenging, contexts in later units, using varied assessments and the inclusion of quizzes are all designed to help pupils remember content and integrate new knowledge into their evolving conceptual framework. Quality resources and materials are provided online to support the history curriculum and are sequenced towards the accumulation of skills, knowledge and understanding, working towards the next key stage.

Impact

The impact of Rising Stars History is evidenced through the pupils’ use and understanding of the knowledge, skills, concepts and specialist vocabulary. It is evidenced by the use and outcomes of the varied activities, assessments and quizzes provided. The broad range of approaches for pupils to communicate their knowledge ensures that everyone can demonstrate progression and impact. In particular, it is evidenced by the pupils’ ability, willingness and confidence in addressing and discussing each unit’s key question, giving a response focusing on historical vocabulary, skills and concepts. Pupils understand and can clarify to others what history is and the importance and value of studying the subject. They can explain to others how they are progressing and what they can do to get better in the subject.

Progression

All pupils work on the same core tasks with accompanying materials. Those that grasp content and concepts quickly can go on to work on the ‘stretch and challenge’ extensions within a task. This will require them to go into greater depth, for example by making connections to other societies or time periods studied. They will be guided to look at concepts in greater depth, for example they will begin to categorise the causes of an event and to compare their importance. Those that are not sufficiently confident may be targeted for extra support. Knowledge and skills are introduced then revisited in different units and in different contexts. This enables progression to be identified, planned for, developed and monitored. Progress in developing skills and understanding concepts is achieved