History at Mayflower

At Mayflower, we have a creative history curriculum designed to engage children’s interest and bring the past to life.  Learning is hands on and practical, whether we’re visiting the Tower of London, examining Stone Age artefacts or trying out crafts from Shang Dynasty China.  Our wide range of history topics cover local history, British history and the history of the wider world. 

We focus on three key historical skills, which children develop and refine in their time at Mayflower.  These skills are: chronology, historical enquiry, and knowledge.

Chronology is all about ordering events and periods of history.  In Early Years and Key Stage One, children build an understanding of their place in history by creating family trees and personal time lines, before looking at the chronology of key events and the lives of important people.  In Key Stage Two, children develop an understanding of different historical periods and the order in which they happened.  By the end of Year 6, children are familiar with the chronology of British History and how this relates to events in the wider world.

Historical enquiry is all about using different sources to help ask and answer questions about the past.  From Key Stage One, children start using artefacts, historical sites, photographs, images and some written sources to find out about people and events in history.  In Key Stage Two, children use these sources to justify their ideas about the past, and by the end of Year 6 they can look at both sides of an argument and consider which sources of information are most reliable.

Knowledge is all about learning and retaining facts, and using this information to analyse the past.  In Key Stage One, children learn key facts about people and events, which they use to compare the lives of historical figures and think about why events are important.  In Key Stage Two, children build up a bank of knowledge about different periods in British and world history.  They use this knowledge to think about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance – both within each period, and making comparisons with topics they have covered previously.