History

If you were to walk into a History lesson at King Athelstan, you would see children from EYFS to Year 6 engaging with the skills and knowledge they will need to be lifelong historians. We start building on historical understanding from EYFS by centring history around the child and their immediate understanding. This will start with their daily routines or comparing infant siblings abilities against their own and relating this to the passing of time. As they progress through the years, the circle will grow wider as they start to look at the history of the school, their local area and link these to visuals and tangible objects which they can observe and handle.

Gradually, as they start to develop their understanding of chronology, they will begin to learn other key historical skills and investigate events farther back in time, whilst confronting the more abstract concept of decades, centuries and millennia. Through our own bespoke curriculum, children are able to synthesise knowledge they have gained from the lesson into writing elements e.g. writing diary entries from the perspective of monks facing a Viking raid on Lindisfarne and are able to use historically accurate vocabulary to express how they might have felt themselves. They will also experience other methods of historical investigation, such as artefact handling, source analysis and debate. Children will further build on key skills throughout their time with us such as comparing and identifying by relating similarities and differences in the history with their own experience and locality.