Home Page

History

“If we can’t understand the past, we can’t understand the future”

Jessica C, Y5 (Pupil Voice, 2026)

At Codnor Primary School, our history curriculum is shaped by our vision, “Let your light shine”, and reflects our ambition for all pupils to achieve and flourish. We aim to develop pupils who think, speak and act like historians. Pupils are taught to research purposefully, understand chronology, analyse and weigh evidence, evaluate interpretations and construct informed historical arguments: skills which are invaluable to their future lives in education and beyond.

Our carefully sequenced curriculum builds knowledge and skills progressively from Early Years to Year 6, ensuring pupils know more and remember more over time. It goes beyond the National Curriculum to enhance cultural capital and deepen pupils’ understanding of the past and its impact on the present. Through the study of history, pupils develop key personal qualities, including respect, tolerance, empathy and an understanding of British Values, supporting them to become confident, reflective learners who are well prepared for the next stage of their education and life in modern Britain.

Aims:

An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes.
The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.
The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgements.

Through sequences of lessons and topics, pupils' historical skills and concepts are built, reinforced, and transferred into other contexts, allowing children to deepen their understanding and remember what they learn.

Our pupils leave Codnor Primary School with the knowledge to think, act, and speak like a historian, and they value the transference of these skills into their everyday life, in education and beyond.

How History looks at Codnor:

History objective progression:

National Curriculum objectives have been carefully allocated to each year group to ensure a well-sequenced history curriculum. This approach enables pupils to progressively develop their understanding of chronology while systematically building and deepening historical knowledge over time.

History progression map

History knowledge progression:

Disciplinary knowledge is deliberately planned and sequenced within and across year groups so that key concepts are revisited, strengthened and made secure, enabling learning to become embedded and ‘sticky’. This coherent and cumulative approach ensures pupils develop the subject-specific knowledge and skills required to think, act and speak like historians, allowing them to answer increasingly complex, subject-specific questions with confidence. Through this rigorous and thoughtfully designed curriculum, pupils are empowered to let their light shine as confident, knowledgeable learners who are well prepared for future study and life beyond the classroom.

History - disciplinary knowledge progression.pdf

History medium term plans:

History at Codnor Primary School is carefully planned and coherently structured to ensure a well-sequenced curriculum that supports pupils to build knowledge and skills over time. Subject leaders ensure that the history curriculum is ambitious, appropriate and well planned for each year group, with clearly defined end points that build systematically on what pupils have already been taught and learned. Medium term plans show show the History curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced so that pupils build knowledge and skills sequentially and cumulatively.

KS1 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6

The golden threads of History:

In History at Codnor Primary School, golden threads are identified key concepts and themes that run throughout the curriculum. These threads are deliberately revisited at different points in each pupil’s journey through the school, enabling pupils to make connections between periods of history and deepen their understanding over time. Revisiting these concepts supports knowledge retention, helping learning to become secure and ‘sticky’, while strengthening pupils’ ability to think, act and speak like historians.

The document below maps out the golden threads of history and shows how they are explicitly taught and revisited across year groups, ensuring a coherent, cumulative and well-sequenced curriculum that reflects our vision of “Let your light shine.”