As a school, we aim to inspire curiosity and fascination about Britain and the wider world by developing each child’s historical skills, knowledge and understanding through engagement with a wide range of primary and secondary sources of evidence.  We want our children to develop the ability to reflect on the past and make meaningful links to the present day.  We follow the National Curriculum and embrace an ambitious, broad spectrum of stimulating topics through local, British and world history.  Our detailed history units show a clear, progressive sequence of knowledge and skills in the children’s learning journey. By linking learning to a range of time periods, children are given the opportunity to investigate and interpret the past, understand chronology, build an overview of local, British and world history. 

History learning at RMJS is underpinned by specific knowledge and understanding which is taught through five key elements which form historical lenses: Cause and Consequence, Change and Continuity, Similarity and Difference, Chronological Understanding and Historical Significance.  These key elements enable children to analyse history in a variety of ways and to think, communicate and reflect like a historian.  Teaching adopts an enquiry-question approach which supports a deeper understanding of historical events through investigation.  Substantive concepts, which form an integral part of our history learning, have been carefully mapped out to ensure key concepts are revisited and expanded, allowing children to hook onto previous learning and deepen their historical knowledge and understanding. 

Our knowledge-rich curriculum is ambitious and designed to equip children with the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding to think and act like a historian.  Each year group studies two periods of history (one for a term and one for half a term) to ensure deeper conceptual learning over time.    An accumulative block timeline is used throughout the school to secure chronological knowledge and understanding of how the time periods studied fit together, relate to each other and identify them as British or world history. 

At RMJS, we promote inclusive practice and seek to provide engaging learning opportunities so all children to access the history curriculum.  Through careful planning, we ensure that all learning is appropriately constructed to enable all learners to meet the intended learning outcome.  Children engage in meaningful discussions, developing appropriate, accurate vocabulary, and talk enthusiastically about their learning. 

When they leave our school, we aim for children to have a secure grasp of the concepts outlined in our curriculum, ready to be built on further in KS3 and beyond.  We hope that through learning history at RMJS, some children will be inspired to study history at a higher level or develop a lifelong interest.