Valuing Our Local Heritage

We believe strongly that children should have a rich understanding of their local heritage, especially in Whitworth which has seen a vast amount of changes over the years. This is why local history is woven into our history curriculum to ensure it is explicitly taught and that links with larger historical themes are made. For example, in Year 2, children learn about the Whitworth Doctors to identify the historical significance and difference with today's medicine world. In Year 4, children explore the history of transport within the local area, from the local train line to the River Spodden impact. In Year 5, children explore the impact of the Industrial Revolution on society and trade, exploring the changes in a town over time. In Year 6, children visit the local war memorial and use it to answer enquiry questions related to the impact of WWI and WWII on the local area. 

Local history teaching ensures that the children have opportunities to collect information about the place in which they live; reach conclusions; develop fieldwork skills; is relevant to their knowledge and provides a clear link to the community in which we live.

Throughout their time at OLSA, children will explore significant places such as Whitworth House, The Briars and Healey Dell Viaduct.

Implementation - How Will We Deliver the Curriculum?

Linking the Curriculum

We have developed our curriculum to make learning stick. At the heart of our approach is retrieval practice and recapping. Retrieval practice involves deliberately recalling knowledge from memory to make learning more robust and flexible.  Each time a memory is retrieved, it is strengthened and less likely to be forgotten. If we wish our curriculum to build over time, then we need to teach in a way that makes knowledge ‘stick’. Units of work refer to learning from previous units to enable children to grapple with historical concepts such as 'continuity and change', and 'similarity and difference'. For example, when studying the Anglo-Saxons in Year 5, children make comparisons between Roman Britain (studied in Year 3) and Anglo-Saxon Britain.  Our teaching of history is driven by an enquiry approach that seeks to capitalise on children's curiosity and prior learning. Units of work are structured around an overarching historical enquiry, along with the 'Golden Threads'  to ensure teaching is focused and children are working towards a clearly defined outcome. The overarching enquiry is often broken down into small sub-enquiries to give children a sense of gradual progression and make learning large chunks of content more manageable.