Humanities

Our vision of We Believe, We Nurture and We Succeed for Humanities enables children to make sense of the world and gives them a sense of belonging.  Through our curriculum we have high expectations of our children and encourage and nurture them to believe in themselves by actively praising their efforts.  The teachers plan lessons and experiences for the children so that they can be successful and all children are nurtured according to their needs with lessons adapted accordingly.

The humanities curriculum, separated into Geography and History, uses progressive skills of knowledge and understanding to support children to succeed right from Nursery, where the Development Matters curriculum is used, through to Key Stage 1 and 2, where lessons are developed through the National Curriculum.

Children start on their geography and history educational journey in the Early Years Foundation Stage beginning in Nursery. The Development Matters Curriculum is used to plan a topic-based approach. We focus on the Understanding of the World ‘people, culture and communities’ and ‘natural world’ strands as this sets out clear identifiable geographical and historical knowledge that children are to learn. In the Early Years, children begin to acquire some of the geographical and historical vocabulary that they will build on through the rest of their learning.
Children do not, at this age, need comprehensive or complex knowledge of concepts. Early familiarity with these concepts will allow children to access the curriculum as they develop through the school.

Although history and geography are taught in blocks throughout KS1 and KS2, there remains consistent referencing from one topic to the next in order for our children to understand the process of societal change and the relationship between geographical areas worldwide. It is imperative that our pupils have a chronological understanding of history and this is evident through our careful curriculum planning and sequencing from one year group to the next.

Attached is a copy of our current long term plan.  The sections in blue are Geography units and the sections in yellow are History units.

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