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By Glenn Carter, primary school teacher and history lead in Teesside; Associate Specialist Adviser for Education Durham; and sits on the Historical Association’s Primary Committee. Glenn runs the History Rocks website as well as working with various educational providers.
We are 2/3 form entry on the outskirts of a fairly affluent area. This means that the majority of our children come to us from a good starting point and often have experiences in the wider world. Obviously, this does not apply to every child though. We are able to offer units per year group rather than having to enact a rolling program which makes planning a cohesive curriculum more straightforward. The school offers an EYFS setting, KS1 and KS2. We are currently, at the time of writing this, a maintained school and one of the only ones in the surrounding area. There are 7 primary schools within 5-10mins drive of each other as Ingleby Barwick is the largest purpose-built private housing estate in Europe.
Early Years Foundation Stage
History is incorporated into our EYFS through the use of stories and texts, as well as tapping into the immediate area and surroundings. The idea is to start with the world around them and make things as concrete as possible, while introducing simple time-based concepts like today, yesterday, tomorrow etc.
Whilst there is no formal ‘sit-down’ history learning, many of the more historically linked units are based or derivative of the texts and stories that are read. For example, books such as ‘Mrs Armitage and the Big Wave’ offers the opportunity to explore what people will do on holiday (in preparation for KS1), ‘And Tango Makes Three’ allows them to look at what a ‘typical’ family may or may not look like and how families have changed over time (the story is about a pair of male penguins who adopt a baby penguin), various stories about knights and castles which allow them to explore which elements might be real and made up, along with a variety of stories based on transport which prepare for units in KS1.
The rationale behind a lot of the choices for EYFS, and KS1 too, are to build upon an understanding of the world around them, with the thinking ‘why do OUR children in OUR area need to know that NOW’ being at the forefront of the decisions. Lots of our EYFS units and learning prepare for corresponding units in KS1 so that there is a natural link between key stages.
Key Stage 1
KS1 sees the introduction of more disciplinary-based elements of history and the use of over-arching enquiry questions. We show the children the enquiry framework that we use and where the lessons fit into the overall question. Although the youngest children might not fully grasp the concept, the visual overview, which is repeated throughout KS1 and KS2, allows them to recognise that they have been doing this for a long time and that this is how historians often work. As Ofsted wrote in the subject report (2023): “New knowledge is hard to learn when it is highly abstract or unfamiliar to pupils.” This applies to the substantive and disciplinary.
The choices that I have made for KS1 have been largely geographical to try and build on the children’s knowledge of the world around them. For example, Year 1 start with George Stephenson as we are in the town of Stockton and everywhere they go, they will encounter some sort of reference to him or the trains in either street names, statues or murals. This is their immediate history and was one of the biggest reasons for the growth and development of the area and something that feel every child in our school should be aware of. They then follow this on with a study of Robert Ropner and shipbuilding as it was again, a cornerstone of Stockton. It also builds on nicely from Stephenson as the materials to build the ships came from the trains. It also allows the children to see how the area has been significant for a number of different modes of transport. Finally, they finish with seaside holidays and how they have changed since the 1960s and 1970s. The unit starts with some Victorian background as the local resorts (about 20-25mins drive away) were developed during that era, largely thanks to (you guessed it) the railways! The aim is for the children to gradually expand their knowledge and build on from it, continuously returning back to prior learning.
In Year 2, due to the time of year, the children learn about the Gunpowder Plot and Remembrance as a ‘Commemoration’ unit. Whilst they learn about the main elements of the Gunpowder Plot, they look at how it is remembered across the country and whether our area remembers and engages with it in the same way as in London, to try and make it relevant to our children and include a national and local element rather than it just being a ‘London’ event. We repeat this with Remembrance and look generically at it first before diving into local people and events, as well as how it is remembered in our area. In the Spring, they compare Captain Cook with Dr Nicholas Patrick (a NASA astronaut who was directly influenced by Cook and was born in one of the seaside towns studied in Y1). These replace the typical ‘Columbus/Armstrong’ comparison with local people who have done similar things. Finally, a study of the Titanic wraps up our themes of locality and transport as links to one of the Titanic’s sister ships, the Lord Cromer, was built in our area. This gives us chance to reflect on prior learning from Y1 about shipbuilding and how our area is linked with national and international history.
Lower Key Stage 2
Whilst our KS1 units are linked by locality, transport and significance, our KS2 units have themes based on achievements, society, housing and religion. These are our core threads as I felt that virtually all of the units could be linked through these and they gave the children a good basis for understanding the ways of life of a variety of different people throughout history. Other elements that are often linked include empire, tax, trade and conflict, plus others that arise when appropriate. The use of enquiry questions is more prominent in KS2 and we ask the children to respond directly to these questions in their assessments to build on the idea that historians often respond to a question or theory.
Y3 starts with the Stone Age to Iron Age as we try to keep British history in chronological order. It is harder to do this with world history depending on which dates you choose to start and end at. There are local links made throughout the various ages such as a Stone Age canoe found in Thornaby, a Bronze Age mummy (referred to as a ‘mummy’ in reports due to the way the body had been treated.) found in one of our teachers’ back garden along with an Iron Age settlement at Thorpe Thewles nearby. These all help show the children that our own areas were affected by these ages too. They then look at their KS2 local unit which is focused on industrialisation in Teesside, bringing together lots of elements from KS1 such as trains, ships and the growth of the area. The purpose of this unit is to get them to see that the wider area was at one point, one of the most significant industrial areas in the entire world but has declined in recent years. The enquiry statement that we use is deliberately ‘loaded’ to evoke a response – ‘Teesside is the most significant place in the world’. The aim is for them to see that significance can shift over time and to explain those changes.
In Y4, we study the Roman Empire and its impact on Britain. We usually take the children to a visit at Arbeia Roman Fort in South Shields (about an hour away) as this gives an excellent chance to see somewhat-local evidence in the flesh. There is also the ‘most northernly Roman villa in the entire empire’ located 5 minutes away from our school, but unfortunately it has been covered over to make way for housing. It is still a great opportunity to see how the empire connected our area to places like Rome or Egypt as Egyptian glassware was found there, along with a number of coins as well as pre-Roman finds, helping us to link back to their Prehistoric study in Y3. They finish the year with the Earliest Civilisations overview and Ancient Egypt as the main focus. It is of course difficult to make local links, but we tie in with the Oriental Museum in Durham (again, about an hour away) which has an actual Egyptian mummy in it, plus a small obelisk and ither incredible treasures. We use this to show how our area is connected to Egypt by explaining the journey of the mummy – it was bought by someone in the Lake District and shipped over to England, then it was brought over to the Darlington Hippodrome to support the showing of the original ‘The Mummy’ film in the 1930s. It was then purchased by Durham University and put on display at the Oriental Museum.
Upper Key Stage 2:
Our Y5s study Ancient Greece, the Anglo-Saxons, Scots and Vikings throughout the year. We try to make local links with the Greeks by looking at different pieces of architecture along with various Greek carvings and objects found in places like York. There is also a statue of Neptune in Durham City Centre which was built to represent Durham as being a great in-land port, along with some ‘keystone’ heads from Middlesbrough’s Royal Exchange which were said to have links with Greek river gods which were symbolic of the River Tees and its importance to Teesside. When teaching the Greeks, it is important to show their enduring legacy across areas of life and across the Western World itself. With the Anglo-Saxons, Scots and Vikings, we make lots of links to place names – Ingleby Barwick has been translated as meaning ‘Settlement of the English and the Barley Fields’ – where one of the other primary schools (our former site) is called Barley Fields. We also link to Roseberry Topping which has also been named Odin’s Berg. There have been a number of burial sites in the area of national significance too which help demonstrate changes in religion and significant people at a similar level to those of Sutton Hoo.
Finally, in Y6, our children learn about the British Empire under the Victorians as their post-1066 study and link in to how the empire affected the local area through shipbuilding and industry, linking back to KS1 and Y3. The pub at the Teesside Barrage (used for white-water rafting) is called The Talpore, in reference to a ship that was built in Stockton to carry troops along the Indus River during the Victorian era and was one of the largest ships of its time. This gives us great links back to KS1 shipbuilding in the area and a reference to the Indus Valley Civilisation. When they look at the ‘purpose’ of the empire (essentially to exploit local resources, ship them back to Britain to turn into goods to resell back to the empire alongside their perception that they were bringing civilisation to the uncivilised) then we link to the growth of industry in Teesside in the 1800s and how the production here was helping to build railways and bridges all across the British Empire. They finish their historical units with a comparison of the Maya with the Vikings. This one is very tricky to make local links with, but we try to make more general comparisons through our main themes of achievements, society, housing and religion. We look at how the Maya had minimal access to metal ores but we did in our area or how huge settlements in Mesoamerica were much greater than those in Britain or our own area at similar times.