Purpose of Study

At Carville, we aim provide pupils with a high-quality History education that provides pupils with a coherent knowledge and understanding of Wallsend, Britain and the wider world’s past. A high proportion of our children enter school with limited experiences of life outside of Wallsend and the rich and diverse past of both their local area and country. Our History curriculum has been designed to ensure children are provided with opportunities both inside and outside the classroom to develop an understanding of historical subject knowledge and skills and how this links to them and their lives. As the school serves a community where there is a high percentage of disadvantaged pupils, we aim to increase our children’s cultural capital by teaching History through experiences and enrichment activities, such as working on projects in collaboration with a local Roman historical site, Segedunum.

Our children have a strong sense of belonging to the community they have grown up in. Despite this, they can struggle to understand what has come before and how Wallsend came to be as it is now.

Our history curriculum links the National Curriculum objectives with the history of Wallsend, allowing the children to make connections and understand how history fits into their lives. Many pupils have members of their family who were directly involved in the shipbuilding industry, and enjoy opportunities to work with the local community, allowing ex workers and former residents to share their own experiences of the once thriving local industry.

At Carville, we aim to activate the children’s prior knowledge and consolidate understanding. Using the Sonar Curriculum, which ensures National Curriculum coverage and progression, our children enjoy their education and made good progress. History topics are introduced as clear learning sequences through small steps. Subject specific resources are used alongside working walls to support all learners to develop their understanding of the history curriculum. Quality first teaching, differentiation and repetitive fact recall ensure our history curriculum meets the needs of all pupils.

History is taught using a topic based approach, whereby several subjects are linked together to allow children to explore connections and apply their knowledge and skills in a variety of contexts.

A high proportion of our children enter school with lower than average language and communication skills. Our history curriculum is designed with a strong focus on vocabulary, ensuring the children have both the subject specific and general language skills to be able to access the National Curriculum and communicate effectively. Word mats, pre-unit learning and vocabulary displays increase pupils’ exposure to both written and spoken language.

At Carville, we have a strong focus on developing reading skills. Through the use of high quality texts, exposure to many different historical sources and access to a wide range of history themed reading for pleasure books, pupils are provided with many reading opportunities to apply and develop their core reading skills.