Availability of expertise, time and the juggling of many responsibilities all make it very difficult to meet the high subject specific expectations in the foundation subjects. One solution is to buy into a scheme and this can be a great starting point. But adapting plans (whether they’re from a publisher or not) and continual review are crucial for building colleagues’ subject knowledge and refining our curriculum offer.
History curriculum design is made up of several important parts:
- The subject overview
- Substantive concepts
- Historical concepts
- Disciplinary knowledge
- End points and steps along the way
1. The subject overview
History leadership has to start with the national curriculum. The subject content section details the statutory things that children should be taught about as well as non statutory examples. Turning this into a well sequenced overview across key stage 1 and 2 first of all requires an appreciation of leaders’ vision for curriculum provision.
Thematic or discrete subjects?
A thematic approach might enable children to make more connections with other subjects but risks blurring the lines between what history is and what other subjects are.
A discrete subjects approach might brighten the lines between subjects but risks children seeing each subject in isolation, missing out on valid links.
A pragmatic approach would be to make links where they are appropriate, without forcing them. Deciding to include content in the history curriculum should not be based on fitting in with a broader topic, but on what will help them to develop a better understanding of history.
In which terms will history be taught?
A common model is to alternate history and geography half termly but it is important to ask why. In history, there is quite a lot that is statutory in the subject content section that is probably best turned into separate units of work:
- Changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age
- The Roman Empire and its impact on Britain
- Britain’s settlement by Anglo Saxons and Scots
- The Viking and Anglo Saxon struggle for the kingdom of England to the time of Edward the Confessor
- A local history study
- As study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066
- The achievements of the earliest civilisations – an overview of where and when the first civilisations appeared
- An in depth study of one of the following: Ancient Sumer, the Indus Valley, ancient Egypt, the Shang dynasty of ancient China
- Ancient Greece – A study of Greek life and achievements and their influence of the western world
- A non European study that provides contrast with British history – one study chosen from early Islamic civilisation including a study of Baghdad c. AD900; Mayan civilisation c. AD900; Benin (West Africa) c. AD900-1300.
That’s at least 9 units of work so it’s easy to see why the common model is to map out roughly 3 topics per year, alternating with geography each half term. However, there does seem to be more statutory content in history compared to other subjects so a model where there are more history lessons than other subjects is logical.
Are their any constraints on number of lessons in each unit of work?
Leaders might design a number of lessons that fits into the number of weeks available in a given half term. The more that I think about this, the more absurd it is. So the answer is no, there shouldn’t be. The unit of work should be as long as it needs to be to give children the opportunity to learn (and not just cover) the content. But it’s so hard to choose the content when there are so many interesting options (more on that later).
Sequencing
Key stage 2 units of work can be broadly chronological but there are choices to make. The chronology of British history is straight forward enough – prehistory in year 3, then Roman invasion etc. Choice comes in how the curriculum supports children’s understanding of chronology, which is more than ‘what came before and after’. It also incudes what was happening around the world at the same time so the placement of units of work on Egypt, Greece, Sumer, the Indus Valley, Shang, Baghdad, Maya or Benin need careful thought.
We might place this study in between the relevant British history units. Or we might do all of British history in one go, then travel the world, making links back to British history to give children a chance to interact with it again. Either way, we need to make a choice and design it well.
Then there is the local history. Where should that go? Well it depends what it is. We might want to slot it into its place in the chronology of British history. If our local area has an interesting Roman fort, we can teach it near the Romans. We might need to place it earlier or later in the key stage depending on the complexity of the concepts that fit with the local history too. Incidentally, to check on interesting possibilities for local history, check out blue plaques.
Key stage 1 presents an entirely different challenge in designing an overview but chronology is still the main consideration with the need to teach changes within living memory and significant events beyond living memory. Thanks to Kirsty Grierson for pulling together a great chronology for infant history as follows:
- EYFS | present and past (their lives and through story)
- Year 1 | changes within living memory
- Year 2 | events beyond living memory
In the EYFS framework for understanding the world, the past and present ELG supports children to understand their position in the present world and make their first forays into their personal history. This is a great starting point for a clear chronology that is developmentally appropriate from R to Year 2, starting with now and moving further back in time.
Choosing specific content
With the broad units of work mapped out, the fun (and hard) bit can start – choosing content for each unit of work. For this we need to settle on criteria for choosing which content should be in and which should be out. To do this, we return to the national curriculum.
In the purpose of study, the parts highlighted in yellow refer to conceptual understanding and the parts highlighted in blue refer to the disciplinary knowledge that children need to develop (more on that later).
But if we look closely, the concepts that we need children to develop can be classified into two types: substantive and historical. The differentiation between them can be most easily seen in the aims section:
2. Substantive concepts
Substantive concepts provide us with the first parameter by which to choose content for each unit of work.
Substantive concepts are those concerned with the subject matter of history – the substance about which students are learning.
History Association
The aims section specifies some and give examples that are non statutory too:
Selecting substantive concepts around which to build a curriculum can be difficult because of just how many concepts there are and how closely related some of them are. Parliament and political history are of course closely related. Peasantry and economic history are too. And so are empire and military history.
It’s sensible to select a smaller number, create clarity around what they include and design lots of interactions in multiple units of work for children to gradually build their understanding of them. For key stage 2, we’ve settled on:
- Power (to include ideas of Monarchy, government and empire)
- Invasion (to include the idea of empire)
- Civilisation (to include the ideas of cultural and social history)
- Religion (to include the ideas of cultural and political history)
- Trade (to include the idea of economic culture)
With these deliberately chosen, teachers and leaders who are making decisions about content can make choices that best support children’s growing understanding of these concepts. This is how we can build progress into our curriculum – by making sure that their understanding of these substantive concepts is designed to be increasingly complex. Far better than trying to build in progress in terms of content – a unit of work on the Ancient Greeks is not intrinsically easier or harder than a unit of work on the Romans for example.
Pupils make progress in history through building their knowledge of the past, and of how historians study the past and construct accounts. Teaching supports pupil progress by embedding frameworks of content and concepts that enable pupils to access future material. Abstract concepts are best learned through meaningful examples and repeated encounters in different contexts. There are a range of important considerations for curriculum designers to ensure a broad curriculum for all pupils.
Ofsted research review series: history
We just need to determine where we start with teaching these concepts. Some can be introduced in key stage 1 with meaningful examples while others need to be introduced later on. What’s important is deliberately planning for how we’ll explain them and what examples we’ll use.
3. Historical concepts
These are big ideas about history itself, edging away from the subject content and towards the discipline. The aims section of the national curriculum contains the following historical concepts:
- Chronology
- Significance (people, developments and events)
- Cause / consequence / legacy
- Continuity and change
- Similarity and difference
- Local, regional, national and international history
Now we have another parameter for selecting content in each unit of work. We choose aspects of history that help to develop children’s understanding of these concepts. It’s another way of building in progress too.
4. Disciplinary knowledge
The discourse around history (and indeed the wider curriculum) seems to have replaced the word skill with disciplinary knowledge. I like the shift because skill suggests transferability across domains while knowledge recognises the importance of knowing about how historians work above superficially replicating it. There is a subtle difference between getting children to think like a historian and understanding how historians think.
You might disagree but nevertheless, the national curriculum is clear about the need to teach children to:
- Weigh evidence
- Sift arguments
- Make connections
- Draw contrasts
- Analyse trends
- Frame historically valid questions
- Create their own structured accounts
- Understand methods of historical enquiry including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims
- Discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
Historians spend many years developing their knowledge of a period in time to be able to do such things and our expectations of, for example, 7 year olds to do the same for Ancient Egyptian history needs to be realistic.
Understand how it was done, not necessarily do it.
That’s the difference between disciplinary knowledge and skills. And of course this looks very different for a 5 year old than it does for an 11 year old which is another way that we can design progress into the curriculum.
5. End points and steps along the way
So far we have units of work mapped out across the key stages and we have parameters by which to select the finer detail of content: substantive concepts, historical concepts and disciplinary knowledge. Now we need to make sure that the sequences of learning in each unit of work go somewhere; that they build towards something. These end points should give children the opportunity to pull together what they have leaned that is faithful to the discipline of science. Writing is a common choice but we have to be careful not to blur the lines between writing and history.
Non examples
Writing a diary entry from the perspective of a Roman soldier is not history. Writing a newspaper report about the great fire of London isn’t either.
Examples
If we’re looking for written outcomes, the national curriculum already points us in the right direction:
- Weigh evidence
- Sift arguments
- Draw contrasts
- Create their own structured accounts
- Explaining how evidence was used to make historical claims
- Discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
Now some of these are more complex than others and so we need to be careful about which we choose for each year group, as well as considering the production of such a task, for example prioritising talk over writing.
Do we need one for each unit of work? Sometimes but not always. An end point could be after 2 or 3 units if there is clear cohesion in the design. In our year 4, for example, children learn about the Romans, the Vikings and the Saxons. All have a strong theme of invasion and so a comparative end point point focusing on this seems sensible.
Sequencing again
With an end point in mind it’s simply a case of mapping out what they need to know in order to do that thing and putting it in a logical order that builds incrementally and enables them to succeed at that final task.
MrNickHart 
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