History Curriculum

We are Historians!

At Holly Mount we are historians! We want our children to love history. We want them to have no limits to what their ambitions are and grow up wanting to be archaeologists, genealogists, anthropologists or professors.

The Holly Mount Curriculum is cross-curricular and designed around missions and adventures through our RESPECT Curriculum –finding out about and recreating the stories of famous and inspirational people past and present. We will explore Native America with Pocahontas, spy with Nancy Wake and go into battle with Spartacus.

Our history curriculum promotes curiosity and a love and thirst for learning about the past. It is ambitious and empowers our children to become independent and resilient – like all curriculum areas. We want to equip our children with not only the minimum statutory requirements of the history National Curriculum but to prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. We firmly believe that it is not just about what happens in the classroom, it is about the added value we offer to really inspire our children –bringing history to life through our own unique Holly Mount story, our local history, trips and visitors.

History subject specific characteristics, which we expect the children to demonstrate, have been developed and shared. These characteristics underpin all work in history and provide a common subject specific vocabulary for staff and children. These characteristics are:

A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes.
The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very confidently.
The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.
The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgments.
A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.