History
At Fairfield, we believe that children need to know that the story of the past is told differently. They need to grasp that history is created from the evidence that remains. Sometimes this evidence is fragmentary or contradictory so we have to weight it and test it for reliability. Historians have to find ways of making sense of this incomplete picture. They also have to make judgments about the accuracy of evidence from the past. If children are to make sense of their own world where newspapers tell different stories about the same events, using different evidence and for different audiences, they need practice at handling these contradictions. They need to know which questions to ask. If they are taught history well, they will be given the necessary training to be open-minded and respectful of evidence in later life.
The other dimension to our history teaching is that of creating a framework of knowledge and understanding into which pupils can place new information. This applies particularly to chronological understanding. We have addressed this through taking real care over the sequencing of our curriculum and how the careful placement of key concepts can aid with the both the learning of new concepts and the prevention of forgetting of those concepts previously taught.