History
History at Bealings is brought vividly to life as we travel back in time to experience the lives of past peoples in Britain and in other parts of the world! At Bealings, we are especially interested in interconnecting our learning. If we are learning about pollution in the Thames in Victorian times, we will connect this with geography and science. This helps create meaning.
We don’t just “find out” about people’s of the past, we experience aspects of their lives, through our work in role, we experience their problems and solutions using the power of dramatic inquiry. We stand in their shoes and have powerful opportunities to think and feel their situations and why they made the decisions they did.
We also make sure we 'think like a historian'. This fits particularly well within the Mantle of the Expert pedagogy.
We focus on three key historical skills, which children develop and refine in their time at Bealings. These skills are: historical enquiry, chronology and knowledge.
Chronology: ordering events and periods of history. In Early Years and Key Stage One, children build an understanding of their place in history by creating personal time lines based on the organisations they are helping to run, before looking at the chronology of key events and the lives of important people.
In Key Stage Two, children develop an understanding of different historical periods and the order in which they happened. By the end of Year 6, children are familiar with the chronology of British History and other World civilisations and how this relates to events in the wider world.
Historical enquiry and interpretation: using different sources to help ask and answer questions about the past.
From Key Stage One, children start using artefacts, historical sites, photographs, images and some written sources to find out about people and events in history. In Key Stage Two, children use these sources to justify their ideas about the past, and consider both sides of an argument and which sources of information are most reliable.
Knowledge (both substantive and disciplinary): facts and skills are deeply embedded in long-term memory by the multi-sensory way in which we live our learning through our Mantle of the Expert investigations.