History

‘You have to know the past to understand the present.’ Carl Sagan

Highgate History Curriculum 

Out aim at Highgate is to engage young minds with the wonder of history, fostering curiosity and igniting a passionate quest for knowledge about the past, enabling them to explore and understand the world through the lens of historical events, cultures, and stories.

Our curriculum is both knowledge-rich and coherently sequenced. Knowledge, in the realm of history, means not only substantive knowledge of historical events, dates and people in the past, but also knowledge of substantive concepts in history and disciplinary historical concepts

The history curriculum allows children to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of local, British and world history. The substantive knowledge taught in the curriculum has been carefully chosen and sequenced using a largely chronological approach. Knowledge of substantive concepts and disciplinary concepts have been interleaved across the curriculum, allowing children to encounter and apply these in different contexts.

From year to year, unit to unit, lesson to lesson, the curriculum supports children in making connections and building upon prior substantive and disciplinary knowledge. For example, the children develop a secure understanding of ‘monarchy’. They begin to learn about British monarchs in EYFS, in Year 2 they learn about significant monarchs such as Queen Victoria and then their knowledge of monarchy is weaved throughout the curriculum in different units such as ‘The War of the Roses’.  The Highgate history curriculum is balanced to enable children to look in some depth at local, national and world history, encouraging children to explore the connection between significant events and people and how they have influenced the modern world. The content in the curriculum ensures children have a secure overview of a period, before studying aspects in more depth.