Rationale:

At Bournville Primary School, we want our children to love history. We want our children to remember their history lessons in our school and to share our excitement for the subject.

At Bournville our history curriculum begins in the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) where children will begin their understanding of history through visits and visitors, a variety of carefully chosen texts. vocabulary development and enhanced provision. As children move through the school, they will be exposed to a curriculum planned in chronological order to secure their understanding of what has gone before, and the impact events can have on each other. In KS1, alongside careful teaching of key knowledge, artefacts and trips enable pupils to gain an understanding of momentous events in World History as well as appreciating how things change over time. 

From September 2023, we have adopted the Opening Worlds humanities curriculum for history, geography and RE in key stage 2.  

Opening Worlds curriculum and its associated teaching approaches will secure the highest possible quality of education for pupils. This is because the curriculum ensures that the subjects reflect the wide reference and academic practices, outside of school, to which they refer. In addition the material is organised so that pupils use earlier material to access to later material and so that pupils start to see how everything connects within a subject.

 Opening Worlds has strongly recommended that the material is taught in sequence because each part makes the next part much more understandable.  Numerous words that are explicitly taught and practised in Year 3 are then taken for granted in lessons in Year 4-6.  If children do not have the secure knowledge of the content and vocabulary of the Year 3 curriculum this is likely to slow progress and limit enjoyment.

All key stage 2 children have, therefore, started with the Year 3 Opening Worlds curriculum.  As a result of moving from the school’s previous curriculum to Opening Worlds, the school has identified a small number of content gaps.  These have been noted and will be addressed through our choice of books that are used in English and read to children, field trips and acts of collective worship.