St Anne's Catholic Primary School

History Progression and Expectations

At St. Anne's, we want the children to make links between their prior historical learning.  This might be what they have learnt in the previous lesson, earlier in their unit, links to a topic they have studied in a previous year or even a different key stage. 

We have identified what we have described as 'sticky knowledge' for each of the units in each year group.  Teachers regularly check children's recall of these facts.  They are isolated facts and not linked to any particular topic.  To build a bigger picture and develop their understanding of key historical concepts, and how concepts are linked across a number of topics, teachers make explicit links to this prior learning with the use of a Progression document.  This document forms part of a suite of resources teachers use to help them plan effectively, and to look forward and back in the children's learning so that links can be made and prior learning remembered. 

Click here to access it. 

We want our children, as historians to:

• Have an excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes.
• Have the ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
• Have the ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.
• Have the ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
• Have a passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
• Have a respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgments.
• Have a desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.