“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”
Marcus Garvey
At Cavendish Church of England Primary School, History helps children understand where we have come from, how societies have changed and how the past continues to shape the world in which we live.
We want our children to be curious about the past and to develop the knowledge and confidence to ask thoughtful questions about people, events and societies. Through History, pupils learn not simply to remember what happened, but to consider how we know about the past, why events happened, what changed, what remained and why different people may interpret the past differently.
History reflects our school vision: We Learn. We Love. We Belong. Children learn about the people and events that have shaped our world, encounter lives and experiences different from their own and develop a stronger understanding of their own place within their local community and the wider story of the past.
Our History Curriculum
We use the Kapow Primary History mixed-age curriculum, carefully organised into a two-year rolling programme designed for the mixed-age structure of Cavendish.
Our curriculum provides full coverage of the National Curriculum while building children's historical knowledge progressively from Reception to Year 6.
History is taught through enquiry questions, with one substantive History unit taught each term. Through these enquiries, children develop both:
- Substantive knowledge – knowledge about people, events, periods, societies and recurring historical concepts; and
- Disciplinary knowledge – understanding how historians investigate, interpret and construct accounts of the past.
Across the curriculum, pupils progressively develop their understanding of:
- chronology;
- historical evidence;
- cause and consequence;
- continuity and change;
- similarity and difference;
- historical significance; and
- historical interpretations.
Children revisit these ways of thinking throughout school, applying them to increasingly complex periods, sources and historical questions.
Our Mixed-Age Class Structure
Our History curriculum is specifically designed around the mixed-age structure of Cavendish.
Robins – EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2
Children begin by developing their understanding of the past through personal and family history, changes within living memory, significant individuals and events, and their local community. Reception children access shared historical contexts through the EYFS area Understanding the World: Past and Present, while Year 1 and Year 2 work towards the statutory Key Stage 1 History curriculum.
Across the two-year programme, enquiries include What is history?, How was school different in the past?, What is a monarch?, How am I making history?, How have toys changed? and How did we learn to fly?
Wrens – Year 3 and Year 4
Children establish important chronological foundations in British history while also studying ancient civilisations and societies beyond Britain. Their enquiries include the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, Roman Britain, Anglo-Saxon Britain, children's lives through history, Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Maya.
Children increasingly use archaeological, written and visual evidence to make supported inferences, explain change and causation and justify their conclusions.
Owls – Year 5 and Year 6
Children deepen their chronological understanding and historical reasoning through British, local and world history. Their enquiries include local history through census evidence, Ancient Greece, unheard histories and historical significance, Vikings, Tudor England and the Second World War.
Older pupils are increasingly expected to select and evaluate evidence, recognise uncertainty, consider competing interpretations and construct well-supported historical arguments.
Our two-year programme ensures that pupils experience the complete curriculum while in each mixed-age phase. Teachers adapt access, scaffolding and expectations of independence, while preserving the intended historical knowledge and enquiry.
Chronology
Developing a secure sense of chronology is fundamental to History at Cavendish.
Each new study is located on class and whole-school timelines and explicitly connected with previous learning.
Children progress from sequencing familiar events and using simple language relating to the passing of time in Robins, to using dates, periods and duration in Wrens. By Owls, pupils make connections between local, British and world history across overlapping timescales and consider longer-term developments and legacies.
This enables children to build a coherent chronological narrative rather than experiencing History as a series of disconnected topics.
Thinking and Working Like Historians
We want children to understand that History involves investigation, evidence and interpretation.
Across school, pupils encounter a range of historical sources including photographs, artefacts, written accounts, testimony, images, census information, datasets and archaeological evidence.
As they become increasingly sophisticated historians, children learn to ask:
- What does this source tell us?
- What can we reasonably infer?
- What might it not tell us?
- Why might different accounts of the past disagree?
- What evidence supports our conclusion?
Children learn that our understanding of the past is constructed from evidence and that historians may reach different conclusions depending upon the evidence available and the questions they ask.
The Cavendish 5 in History
As in all subjects at Cavendish, our Cavendish 5 underpin high-quality teaching and learning in History.
Retrieval
Children regularly retrieve important historical knowledge, vocabulary and chronology, helping new learning connect securely with what they already know.
I Do, We Do, You Do
Teachers explicitly model historical thinking, including how to interrogate sources, construct timelines and use evidence, before guiding children towards increasing independence.
Purposeful Practice
Children repeatedly apply important historical concepts such as chronology, evidence, causation, change and significance across different historical contexts.
High-Quality Questioning
Enquiry lies at the heart of History. Children are encouraged to ask questions, make inferences, compare, explain, justify and challenge interpretations using historical evidence.
Feedback
Live feedback helps pupils address misconceptions, improve the precision of their historical vocabulary and strengthen the evidence and reasoning used to support their conclusions.
History in the Early Years
Historical understanding begins in Reception through Understanding the World: Past and Present.
Children talk about their own lives, families and communities and begin to recognise similarities and differences between the past and the present.
Through stories, photographs, objects, artefacts, simple timelines and purposeful discussion, they begin to understand that events happened before they were born and that we can use evidence to find out about the past.
Reception children are not assessed against the National Curriculum for History. Instead, these experiences build the vocabulary, curiosity and chronological understanding needed for later historical learning.
Local History and Cavendish
Our local area provides an important context for helping children understand that history happened here too.
Local history is deliberately rooted in Cavendish and the surrounding community, rather than being explored only through generic examples.
In Robins, children investigate how school and aspects of local life have changed. Later, Owls use census data and local historical sources to investigate continuity and change within Cavendish and the surrounding area.
This allows children to connect national historical developments with real people, places and communities and strengthens their understanding of their own heritage and sense of belonging.
Inclusion in History
History is for every child.
Teachers remove barriers through explicit vocabulary teaching, visual timelines, carefully chunked source material, oral rehearsal, structured prompts, storytelling, images, objects and drama where appropriate.
Our principle is to adapt access, not ambition. All pupils encounter the central people, events, concepts and enquiry questions within the curriculum.
As children's historical understanding develops, scaffolding is gradually reduced and pupils are expected to work with increasing independence and precision.
Importantly, the amount a child writes is not used as a substitute for historical understanding. Children are supported to demonstrate what they know and how they are thinking historically.
Assessment in History
Assessment focuses on what pupils know, remember and can do with their historical knowledge.
Teachers use:
- low-stakes retrieval;
- pupil discussion and questioning;
- chronology and timeline work;
- source analysis;
- enquiry activities;
- written and oral conclusions; and
- end-of-unit checks.
We assess whether children can draw upon secure historical knowledge to answer an enquiry question and increasingly support their ideas with appropriate evidence.
Assessment identifies misconceptions and gaps in knowledge so that these can be revisited before children move to increasingly complex historical learning.
History and Our Christian Vision
History provides rich opportunities for children to explore identity, community, dignity and belonging.
Through studying the experiences of people from different times, places and societies, pupils encounter lives that may be both similar to and very different from their own.
They learn that history contains many voices and perspectives and that the experiences of individuals and communities deserve to be explored thoughtfully and respectfully.
Our curriculum encourages children to consider questions of power, justice, responsibility, change and human experience, while learning to avoid assumptions and recognise diversity within societies.
Understanding our local history also strengthens children's sense that they are part of a community with its own story — a story which they themselves continue to shape.
The Impact of History at Cavendish
By the time children leave Cavendish, we want them to have developed a coherent chronological understanding of Britain and the wider world and a secure body of knowledge about the people, events and societies they have studied.
They should be able to use historical vocabulary confidently, make connections between periods, explain cause and consequence, recognise continuity and change, consider historical significance and use evidence to support their conclusions.
They should also understand that accounts of the past can differ and have the confidence to ask how we know, rather than accepting every historical claim at face value.
Above all, we want children to leave Cavendish with a genuine curiosity about the past and an understanding that history helps us make sense of ourselves, our communities and the world we share.
We Learn. We Love. We Belong.