Great Fire of London Day!

Year 2s ‘Fire! Fire!’ topic has certainly lit the children’s interest! Over the past few weeks, we have learnt about the significance of the Great Fire of London and the impact this has had on future Great Britain. A real highlight from this topic was the exciting visit from Openbox Theatre Company who delivered a fantastic workshop on the events of the Great Fire. With the children dressed from this time period, the children became the townsfolk and experienced what life would have been like in 1666 London, before, during and after the Great Fire.

Jubilee Day 2022

Courthill school enjoyed celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. The children spent the morning making crowns, bunting and learning all about the royal family. In the afternoon, the whole school met for a 'street party' in the playground where they loved wearing their crowns, listening to music and eating cakes! 

At Courthill, we believe the purpose of history is to provide an essential tool for children to make sense of their place in the world and develop a life-long curiosity about the past - and as humans we can change the world by understanding the past and present.  We want our pupils to question the world around them and to think critically about changes that have occurred throughout history. We believe that a high-quality history education provides the children with the foundations for them to achieve these skills. Our local and wider history has impacted the world in so many ways, good and bad, and all pupils should be taught essential aspects of the knowledge, in order to learn from history and have an opinion.

Children will be encouraged to pose questions, examine artefacts and use different source material to find similarities and differences across and within different periods of history. They will consider events of local, national and international importance and will discuss how life was different for people in contrasting periods of the past.  

At Courthill, we ensure the History curriculum is accessible to all pupils through differentiation for individual abilities. The children will often be given opportunities to focus their own learning by identifying famous people and places to study or setting questions to answer. They will discuss how the past is represented in different ways and why there may be differing explanations for events. To begin their learning journey through history, in Foundation the children will look specifically at their own lives, talk about past and present events of theirs and their families, before moving on to consider other people’s lives, and how they were different in the past. We want our children leaving Foundation to really understand and discover their past and present lives and that of their families, in order for them to gain the skills to understand that there is a past and things can change over time.

Our aims are to:

• provide an exciting and thought-provoking curriculum that promotes and satisfies their curiosity.
• encourage children to question and explore, so that they can make observations about themselves and their lives.
• help children to develop the skills needed to find out answers to their questions.
• develop positive attitudes towards researching their families past.
• encourage children to be open-minded and consider other’s thoughts, feelings and ideas.
• develop children’s growth mind set and listen to others history and experiences.
• develop an ability to interpret findings critically and make links to what they already know about the world around them.
• learn about similarities and difference within their lives and those of their friends or visitors.

Our main aim is to develop children’s knowledge, skills such as interpretation (concepts of bias, interpretation, evaluation and validity propaganda etc) and understanding. We encourage children to ask, as well as answer questions about not only what they do not know, but also looking at the things they want to know. They use a range of ways to research, computing, literature, visitors or trips within the lessons where it enhances their learning. We try to encourage a love of learning by using many creative skills for example role-play, art and discussions, so they are engaged in a wide variety of activities across all areas of the curriculum. Wherever possible, the children are involved in ‘real’ historical activities (ie creating their own history here at school, time capsules, drama to provide them with an understanding of how people may have felt in the past) and making links with other curriculum areas to maximise their learning opportunities. We utilise the skills and knowledge around us by inviting visitors into school, going on school trips and celebrating our country's history like Remembrance Day, VE day, Queen’s Jubilee, as well as learning about important and inspirational people in history through assemblies (eg, Greta Thunberg, David Attenbourgh, science day). We also celebrate local heroes such as NHS staff, police, firefighters, carers, shop staff.

By the end of Year 2, children will understand that they are a part of and can change history.

Here are some helpful websites for you to look at with your child to learn more about history:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/forkids

For more information about History, please see view the History National Curriculum

History planning and long term rationale at Courthill