Intent

Our History curriculum, guided by the Grammarsaurus 3D framework, aims to ensure that every child develops a rich, connected and meaningful understanding of the past. We want pupils to become curious, reflective young historians who can explore civilisation, empire, exploration, industry, migration, monarchy, rebellion, settlement and trade—key substantive concepts that run throughout the curriculum and shape pupils’ understanding of how societies function, grow and change. These concepts are intentionally revisited across different year groups and historical periods to strengthen long-term memory and encourage children to make connections across time and place.

A core part of our intent is to develop confident disciplinary thinkers. Pupils learn to work with essential historical skills, including chronology, cause and consequence, change and continuity, evidence and interpretation, historical significance, and similarity and difference. Alongside these, they develop supporting enquiry skills such as asking and answering questions, studying evidence, sifting arguments, thinking critically, understanding timelines, and forming balanced judgements. Through this blend of substantive content and disciplinary thinking, children not only learn historical facts but learn how to study history—to question, explore, analyse and justify. Ultimately, our aim is for pupils to leave primary school with secure historical knowledge, the ability to think critically about the past, and an appreciation of how history shapes both their community and the wider world today.

Implementation

• We follow the Grammarsaurus 3D History Curriculum, which builds learning around carefully sequenced substantive concepts such as civilisation, empire, rebellion and trade. These concepts appear across units and are supported by icons in teaching materials to reinforce connection and progression.

• Each year group studies a balanced selection of units across themes such as Society & Community, Exploration & Invasion, Power, and Conflict & Disaster, ensuring broad and rich coverage.

• Each history lesson explicitly teaches a key historical skill—chronology; cause and consequence; change and continuity; evidence and interpretation; similarity and difference; or significance—supported by visual icons that appear throughout the programme.

• Pupils also develop crucial supporting enquiry skills including asking and answering questions, studying evidence, sifting arguments, thinking critically and understanding timelines, with icons highlighting these in each lesson.

• Substantive concepts are revisited throughout year groups using the Grammarsaurus concept progression map, enabling pupils to build increasingly sophisticated understanding over time.

• Knowledge organisers, lesson slides and progression documents from Grammarsaurus structure teaching and support consistency across the school.

• A broad range of historical sources—including artefacts, images, accounts and digital archives—help pupils question, interpret and form judgements about the past.

• Vocabulary progression is embedded across year groups, ensuring pupils acquire and use historical terminology accurately and confidently.

• Assessment takes place through low-stakes quizzes, timelines, retrieval tasks, enquiry outcomes and discussions that check conceptual understanding and knowledge retention.

• Cross-curricular links with English, geography, art, and PSHE enrich learning and give pupils meaningful contexts to apply their historical understanding.

Impact

By the end of primary school, pupils develop a secure grasp of the substantive concepts that underpin the study of history, such as empire, migration or industry, and can explain how these ideas recur and evolve across eras. They can place events, civilisations and individuals accurately within a chronological framework and confidently explain the causes and consequences of historical developments. Through repeated exposure to the key historical skills, pupils become analytical thinkers who can evaluate evidence, explore interpretations, identify continuity and change, and understand the significance of people and events.

Their enquiry skills allow them to ask thoughtful questions, sift information, form reasoned judgements and communicate their conclusions with clarity. Pupils demonstrate a strong command of historical vocabulary and can articulate their ideas clearly in both spoken and written forms. Most importantly, they leave primary school curious about the past, able to think critically about the world around them, and prepared with the disciplinary knowledge and skills needed for continued success in history at secondary school and beyond.