History

The Subject Leader is Miss Sophie Vasiljevic.

Our vision

Our vision at Fairhaven is that the teaching of history gives pupils an understanding of the past through learning about human achievements and experiences. In order to achieve this, we will investigate sources such as pictures, stories, writing and artefacts to ask and answer questions about the past and how these impact the world we live in today. Furthermore, we will examine the children's own personal history, and develop their sense of chronology throughout the study of periods of time through Key Stages 1 and 2. Through a carefully sequenced curriculum which builds on local history, then national and finally international history, we aim to develop our pupils’ understanding of the UK as a coherent, chronological narrative, developing their understanding of historical concepts and use them to make connections and frame historically-valid questions. In addition, pupils will develop an understanding of significant aspects of the history of the wider world. We aim to give our children a history curriculum which enables them to become confident, creative and independent learners. We seek to broaden children's real-life experiences through educational visits, exploration and discovery. And finally, we believe that within history lessons, our children acquire a range of knowledge and skills, which they can then apply to other subjects and in a variety of situations.

History at Fairhaven

Fairhaven Primary School is located in the West Midlands, but more specifically, in the Black Country. History is all around us and starts literally on our doorstep: the school itself is built on an old sand pit – an area from which sand was excavated. Although not as famous as Gornal sand (Gornal being located just 5 miles away), the sand from these sand pits played an important part in the area’s manufacturing past: glass making. Wordsley and Stourbridge are world famous as the centre of glass manufacturing and in fact, until recently, Wordsley was home to the glass museum, now sadly closed. However, school lies in the shadow of the famous Red House Glass Cone – a symbol on the Black Country flag.

Running next to the Red House Glass Cone is the Stourbridge Canal. During the Industrial Revolution the ‘Black Country’ was a manufacturing landscape. Factories and foundries lined a network of canals. Barges carried coal, sand and limestone to works that made everything from heavy bridges to delicate jewellery.

Moving further afield the Black Country’s fame continues. The town of Netherton is famous for chain making, but also for making the anchor for the ill-fated titanic; Baggeridge is famous for making bricks; Dudley is home to the famous motte and bailey castle built in 1070 shortly after the Norman Conquest. In its shadow lies the famous Black Country Living Museum celebrating life in the Victorian period.

History is literally all around us with buildings in Wordsley dating back to the time of the Civil War. These rich historical surroundings are why we believe in the importance of weaving LOCAL history into all of our topics. The aim is to make history relevant to our children, something that is personal, interesting and resonates with them. And that is also why celebrating our 50th anniversary in the academic year 2019-20 is so important to us.

Overview of learning

Here at Fairhaven, we are in the process of re-planning our foundation subjects in order to improve our curriculum even further. We have put together a new whole school overview of the subjects that will be taught in History, following our teaching of the new curriculum content. Children have begun their updated cycles of learning as of Summer Term 2022. We cannot wait to continue embedding our new learning into our teaching and we hope that the children enjoy studying our improved units of History. Please find the overview below.