At Manor Park Academy, we believe that high-quality history lessons inspire children to want to know more about the past and to think, and act as historians.

Through linking learning to a range of topics, children have opportunities to investigate and interpret the past in a variety of different ways, as well as through a variety of exciting contexts. Children will learn and continuously build on historical skills such as understanding chronology, communicating historically and investigating and interpreting historical sources. They will build a good knowledge of key periods in British history, as well as exploring history in the wider world.

We develop children with the following essential characteristics to help them become historians:

• An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events and contexts from a range of historical periods, including significant events in Britain’s past;
• Learning about the concept of chronology, which underpins children’s developing sense of period, as well as key concepts such as change and causation.
• The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas confidently to a range of audiences;
• The ability to support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using historical evidence from a range of sources;
• The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past by formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry;
• A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make critical use of it to support their learning, including exploring the significance of bias;
• A developing sense of curiosity about the past and how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
• A knowledge and understanding local history.