St Thomas' C.E. Primary School

Vision Statement for History 

At St Thomas’, we aim to inspire in our pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and the people within it; engaging and helping to develop a life-long love of learning and understanding of the world they live in. 

St Thomas’ learners are encouraged to engage with the History curriculum through a chronological approach, beginning in Early Years and ending in Year 6. We aim to enable our children to become independent thinkers through developing their curiosity about different civilizations and wonders, while allowing them to develop their understanding of history based on what they have learned in previous years at St Thomas’.

We encourage our children to be reflective and resilient learners through developing their ability to read and interpret different primary and secondary resources which can lead to different debates about the attitude of certain people and cultures through history.  We strongly advocate all our children to be tolerant and responsible citizens through developing their understanding of the contribution different civilizations played, not just in the UK, but across the world.

 St Thomas’ historians, become respectful compassionate and kind friends through understanding human achievements and experiences throughout the world and understanding the contribution of many different faith groups throughout history.  This will be done by offering a wide range of real-life experiences - both inside and outside of school - including educational visits, visitors, experimentation, exploration and discovery.

We grow together in History by:

• Developing an excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes.
• Gaining the ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
• Having 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.
• Acquiring the ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry. 
• Instilling 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. 
• Gaining a respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgments.
• Nurturing the desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.

As historians, we aim to follow our school’s curriculum vision in order to
Be Curious, Be Knowledgeable, Be Creative, Be Compassionate,
Be Reflective, Be Courageous.

Growing together through faith in Jesus Christ, ‘Let all you do be done in love.’

(1 Corinthians 16)