History

At White Cliffs Primary and Nursery School, we believe that, through the study of history, we can help our pupils make sense of their world and enrich their understanding of it. 

Through our history curriculum we hope that pupils will gain knowledge and understanding of the past within our own locality, our country and the wider world. They will learn about the complexity of peoples’ lives, the diversity of societies and the relationships between different groups of people in the past. 

Our history curriculum is designed and constantly adapted to meet the needs and interests of the children which is clearly seen in the development of the history within our EYFS settings as they use ‘Understanding the World’ from Development Matters to underpin their history teaching based on the children’s interests. 

Within our history teaching we develop the essential skills and understanding which are the building blocks for later life, such as developing an understanding of the events which led to World War II and how we can learn from these or how the Anglo-Saxon influence on Dover and the surrounding areas can still be seen today. 

We recognise that as a school we have chosen to teach history in a thematic way as opposed to following teaching history in a chronological order and this has been carefully decided basing our approach on not only what works for our children ‘sequencing in a meaningful way that enables children to make connections and progress across sequences of lessons, terms and years’ (White Cliffs Curriculum Intent 2022). But also, on educational research which supports our decisions to teach history in a more meaningful, logical, and psychologically appealing way (Smith 1980, Fabino 1992) which is supported by Bruner’s meaning-centred cognitive theory.