Vision

A high-quality humanities education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

At Great Kingshill, our high quality programmes of study have been developed to both provide pupils with a comprehensive knowledge of Britain’s past and to develop their understanding of significant locations in the wider world and key events in world history.

Intent

Across the curriculum, children are provided with learning opportunities to progress their humanities skills, knowledge and vocabulary. This progression ensures the children know more, remember more and can do more.

History and geography teaching at GKCS equips pupils with the skills to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence and develop a rounded perspective and judgement.

In history, pupils are taught:

• Changes within living memory. Where appropriate, these should be used to reveal aspects of change in national life.
• Events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or global.
• The lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements. Some should be used to compare aspects of life in different periods.
• Significant historical events, people and places in their own locality.

In geography, teaching should:

• equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.
• As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world should help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments.
• Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and changed over time.

Implementation

At Great Kingshill, we follow a topic based curriculum in which high quality extra-curricular links are sought and nurtured. History and geography form the basis of each year group’s topic for a half term or term. English learning is then linked, alongside other subjects including Science, Art, DT, Music and PE where possible. This cross curricular approach allows children to make links between their knowledge, embed key concepts and fully engage with a particular historical period or geographical process or environment.

History and geography teaching is tailor made for each year group using resources from high quality sources including Twinkl, PlanBee, the Historical Association and the Geography Association. These are then enhanced and adapted to suit the curriculum objectives.

Links to the locality in geography and local people/local events of interest are also featured throughout the curriculum. This provides a rich and varied landscape for the children to explore and learn from. Using the local environment will enable the children to learn through direct experience and first hand investigation as well as placing their learning in a personal context.

In addition to this, representation, equality and diversity is ensured and embedded across the curriculum through lessons on global events and key individuals from across minority groups. As they progress through the school, pupils will become more aware of the process of change, the diversity of societies as well as developing a greater understanding of their own identity.

The Humanities curriculum is enhanced by the use of Digimaps for Schools in geography, which allows children to access Ordnance Survey maps and Now>Press>Play in history and geography, which is an immersive audio resource which enages primary school children in the curriculum through sound, story and movement.

Assessment

In weekly lessons, formative assessment of the humanities at GKCS is achieved through high quality questioning, small independent tasks and facilitated discussions. Children are encouraged to complete knowledge and skill based tasks which are then assessed by the teacher throughout and at the end of the lesson. Feedback is given to ascertain whether the objective has been met and next step questions are provided. Learning is then referred back to in subsequent lessons.

At the end of each topic (either half termly or termly) children are asked to create their own evaluative ‘knowledge organisers’. In these, children have the opportunity to show the key learning they remember from the topic, the skills they have developed in the unit, the cultural capital they have gained and the extra-curricular links they have recognised. This is a fairly new concept for the assessment of the humanities subjects but one all children at GKCS will be becoming more familiar with this year.

Within the curriculum, the expectation is that skills and knowledge are built on each year. Therefore, assessing these within each topic allow us to recognise the growing strengths and talents of our pupils.

Impact

At Great Kingshill, we ensure the children develop the life skills required to flourish and grow in modern society and become active, responsible and thoughtful citizens.

In geography, we aim to develop their natural curiosity about the world and install in them an interest about global issues We highlight and discuss wider issues such as the impact of climate change and promote love and care for our environment.

In history, we ensure children learn tolerance and understanding of others through our teaching on diversity and key events and individuals from the past. Children will learn to question and challenge ideas and learn from both the mistakes and successes of the past.

Through the knowledge and skills learned in the humanities, children at Great Kingshill become reflective, passionate, confident and respectful learners who both value and contribute to the world around them.