New Waltham Academy Pupil Voice

History

We value the views of our pupils and hold termly informal chats with groups of pupils from Year 1-Year 6 to hear what they think about each subject.

As History lead, I had a group of children age ranging from Early Years to Year 6 to share their thoughts and feelings with each other as well as myself on their history learning. 

February 2024

In our pupil voice this term, we focused on what the children enjoy about their history lessons. Teachers also held discussions with the children about what they had voiced previously (see February 2023) and actions subject leaders have made, to act upon some of these things. Children understand that leaders cannot change everything, but that their voice and opinions are taken into consideration.

February 2023

What do the children think about History?

‘I love learning about the past.’

‘I always want to know more and will do more research at home’

‘I really enjoyed learning about toys from the past – we had someone come in to tell us all about it!’

‘My favourite topic in history has been about battles – I learnt lots of things about the Battle of Hastings and the Battle of Trafalgar.  I hadn’t heard of them before!’

‘It’s good to know about the past so we know why we live how we do now.’

‘I love finding out about people in history - like Florence Nightingale.’

‘We’ve been learning about the Suffragettes – they were so brave!’

‘I can’t believe how some people were treated in the past.’

I asked the children what would children like to learn more of in history and how they would like to do it?

World War 1 and World War 2

After reading Anne Frank – the Holocaust

The Tudors – Henry the VIII and his wives.

The Titanic

Dinosaurs 

First, we discussed the question 'What is History?' and we collected our thoughts and ideas. We gathered these together by working collaboratively and created a word cloud using all of the words that we associate with history. These ideas are displayed below: