At Atlas Academy, we aim to provide our children with the essential Historical knowledge that deepens their understanding whilst also fostering their curiosity for the past. We aim to develop pupils’ sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
At Atlas, we follow Primary Knowledge Curriculum (PKC) for History.
The PKC history curriculum has been designed to be both knowledge-rich and coherently sequenced. Knowledge, in the realm of history, means not only substantive knowledge of historical events, dates and people in the past, but also knowledge of substantive concepts in history (such as ‘empire’, ‘monarchy’ and ‘civil war’), and disciplinary historical concepts (such as evidence, causation, significance and interpretation).
The PKC history curriculum allows children to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of local, British and world history.
The substantive knowledge taught in the curriculum has been carefully chosen and sequenced using a largely chronological approach. Each unit of work should not be viewed as a stand-alone topic, but as a chapter in the story of the history of Britain and the wider world. In this sense, the chronological approach provides a solid framework, anchoring each unit within a wider narrative. Understanding in history requires an understanding of causation. Children will be able to understand the causes of significant national and global events, (such as World War I), when they have some background knowledge of what happened before (such as the origins and growth of European empires, including the British Empire).
https://primaryknowledgecurriculum.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/History-Curriculum-Overview-2.pdf