La Fontaine’s high-quality history curriculum helps pupils to gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It has been designed to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past, encourage them to think historically, by using the foundational skills of a historian.
The history curriculum has been carefully designed to allow children to progressively build on their historical skills throughout their school life. History units are planned to equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement, in line with the National Curriculum. We often anchor historical knowledge that we teach in the high-quality reading texts that we read, from our reading canon, providing an important frame for understanding. As a result, pupils at La Fontaine are able to connect the past to the present and have a deep understanding of diverse cultures, people and eras.
We have chosen this approach because we believe that providing knowledge of the world, both as it is now and as it was in the past, is vital for shaping understanding of the world we currently live in (and the one we want to live in). Learners at La Fontaine Academy are able to approach diverse historical topics critically, engaging with the era or event and making connections with other things they have learnt. We enable children to develop their historical skills and make comparisons so that they have a rich understanding about the world that we live in.
Our learners move on to secondary school with a secure understanding of the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.