Benchill Primary School History Curriculum

History Curriculum Learning Journey: 

History Curriculum Booklet Approach: 

At Benchill Primary School, our curriculum development team, led by our Headteacher, have designed a complete and consistent booklet approach to take our pupils on an engaging and exciting learning journey through the History Curriculum.

Our booklets contain: opportunities for Retrieval Practice to enable pupils to remember more of their learning; Key Vocabulary; Talk Tasks; Knowledge Notes; Primary and Secondary Sources for analysis; Challenge Questions to deepen thinking; Sentence Stems and other adaptive strategies; information linking to substantive knowledge concepts; tasks linking to disciplinary concepts; assessment Exit Tickets and End of Unit Knowledge Quizzes. 

If you are a school interested in purchasing our History Curriculum Booklets, please contact Mr Steven Rooney, our Headteacher, directly for more information:

head@benchill.manchester.sch.uk

Intent

At Benchill Primary, our history curriculum aims to:

• Give students a strong understanding of Britain's past and the wider world.

• Inspire curiosity about the past.

• Equip students with skills to ask questions, think critically, analyse evidence, and develop their own perspectives.

We want our students to:

• Understand British history as a chronological narrative from ancient times to the present.

• Learn about significant aspects of world history, including ancient civilizations and empires.

• Grasp key historical concepts like ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’ and ‘parliament’.

• Use historical concepts to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, and create their own structured accounts.

• Understand historical enquiry methods and how evidence is used to construct historical claims.

• Place their growing knowledge into various contexts, understanding connections between different types of history and timescales.

Implementation

The Benchill Curriculum for history is designed to be both knowledge-rich and coherently sequenced. It includes:

• Substantive knowledge: Historical events, dates, and people, as well as key historical concepts (e.g., ‘empire’, ‘monarchy’).

• Disciplinary concepts: Methods of historical enquiry, such as evidence, causation, significance, and interpretation.

Our curriculum ensures:

• A chronological understanding of local, British, and world history.

• Each unit is part of a larger narrative, providing a framework that connects each topic.

• Students build on their knowledge year by year, deepening their understanding of key concepts like ‘monarchy’.

• A balanced exploration of local, national, and world history, showing connections and influences.

Each year, students study at least one unit of British history, exploring significant events and their impact on modern Britain. These units also cover various contexts, such as cultural, social, and religious aspects.

The curriculum also helps students understand how history is constructed and contested. They learn:

• What historians do and how to analyse sources.

• To ask perceptive questions, evaluate evidence, and develop their own viewpoints.

Impact

The Benchill Curriculum aims to:

• Provide a broad and deep understanding of history.

• Encourage curiosity and a love for history.

• Prepare students with essential knowledge for future studies.

   

Students will:

• Gain a comprehensive overview of historical periods before studying aspects in more depth.

• Learn about a wide variety of historical figures and events, from ancient civilizations to modern movements.

• Develop skills to think critically about historical evidence and construct their own interpretations.

Our history curriculum ensures that students leave Benchill Primary with a rich understanding of the past, an appreciation for the complexities of history, and the skills to analyse and interpret historical information effectively.