Curriculum Intention: 

At Woodridge our intention is to ensure that by year six, children have a broad knowledge and understanding of historical events and are able to place them within a chronological time line.  We endeavour to cover historical topics both from Ancient History and from more recent History, ensuring the children’s knowledge of British History as well as the wider world.

Curriculum Implementation:

The Woodridge syllabus has been divided up throughout the school, to ensure that each year a class will cover a topic of British History, Foreign History and an area of Ancient History.

History is taught in three half-termly blocks throughout the year, so that children develop a deeper understanding and depth to their learning. We explore History through a wide variety of means, including opportunities in ICT for pupils to carry out their own research and artefact boxes to allow children to use evidence to make conclusions. Due to a cross curricular approach, History is sometimes taught through other subjects such as Literacy and Geography. Work is recorded in Wider World books. 

Taking advantage of Woodridge Primary School’s physical closeness to central London enables us opportunities to visit some of Britain’s best museums such as; the Imperial War Museum, The RAF Museum and The British Museum. These have proven very successful and have provided excellent learning opportunities. The Barnet Museum is a brilliant place to visit in the locality to support the children’s understanding of local History. We have also had a large number of visits from external agencies such as History Off The Page, who have run history enrichment days for the children. These have included days on The Fire of London, The Anglo Saxons, The Mayans and The Victorians. Class assemblies are often based on History topics and teacher led assemblies will cover relevant historical days.

Big Blue Questions examples:

‘Was Alfred the Great really great?’

‘The Vikings – vicious savages or clever inventors?’

Blue Sky Thinkers:

Howard Carter, Anne Frank, Charles Darwin, Guy Fawkes and Isambard Kingdom-Brunel.

History Subject Leader - Ms Amanda Baikie