At Craneswater, we aim to teach children about history by giving them the tools they need to learn about it.  As well as discussing stories full of action, colour and some occasional gory bits, we teach the children how to look at the evidence we have about the past.  Some of it might be tiny fragments whilst some of it might be contradictory.  We help the children to unpick the evidence and test it for reliability, to know which questions to ask and to make judgements about what they have discovered.

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History is often like completing a jigsaw puzzle.  We don’t have all the pieces and we don’t quite know where they fit.  There is no nice clear picture on the lid to work from and so we teach the children to use clues and to act like detectives to hunt down evidence and to solve historical puzzles together.  In doing so, they learn to work collaboratively and to be open-minded and respectful.

 

Of course, historical knowledge is important too and below you will find an overview of the areas of history that we cover in each year group here at Craneswater. We try to ensure the children build up their chronological understanding as they progress through our history curriculum and to start to develop their subject knowledge – something which they will build upon at secondary school.