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Humanities Curriculum
Geography - Intent
A high-quality Geography curriculum 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.
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 change over time.
Aims of Geography knowledge-led curriculum:
To ensure that all pupils:
• Develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes
• Understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time.
Ensure that pupils are competent in the geographical skills needed to:
• Collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes
• Interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
• Communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length.
Implementation
Teachers work collaboratively to plan Geography using the learning journey planning format (Appendix 2). Geography is planned using progression maps and knowledge mapping to ensure teaching is designed to help learners to remember, in the long term, the content they have been taught and to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts.
EYFS
The EYFS framework is structured very differently to the national curriculum as it is organised across seven areas of learning rather than subject areas. The skills taught across EYFS feed into the geography curriculum but are not taught as subject specific knowledge and skills. The most relevant early years outcomes for Geography are taken from the areas of learning within “Understanding the World”.
The knowledge and skills needed to achieve these outcomes are taught mostly through children playing and exploring during continuous provision times in the day. Teachers deliberately plan enhanced activities which give opportunity for children to learn through their own discovery. Some elements of Understanding The World are taught through English lessons which link to half-termly topics.
Find Out More:
Key Stage 1
At KS1 pupils should develop locational and place knowledge about the world, the United Kingdom and their locality. They should understand basic subject-specific vocabulary relating to human and physical geography and begin to use geographical skills, including first-hand observation, to enhance their locational awareness. Teachers plan and use knowledge organisers to map out learning. These can be used to support quizzing where teachers check which knowledge components have been remembered and identify where further practice is required.
Within the KS1 Phase, Geography units will be taught once per term (on rotation with History) in topics that are designed by staff to meet the targets set out in the National Curriculum. Each topic will be 2 weeks in duration and delivered in a block and to provide deep learning opportunities. Within KS1 staff will ensure that KS1 Geography National Curriculum expectations will be covered within the phase, in line with the coverage set out in the school progression mapping.
Key Stage 2
At KS2 pupils should extend their knowledge and understanding beyond the local area to include the United Kingdom and Europe, North and South America. This will include the location and characteristics of a range of the world’s most significant human and physical features. They should develop their use of geographical knowledge, understanding and skills to enhance their locational and place knowledge.
Within KS2 Geography units will be taught once per term (on rotation with History) in topics that are designed by staff to meet the targets set out in the National Curriculum. Each topic will be 2 weeks in duration and delivered in a block and to provide deep learning opportunities.
- Within the LKS2 phase, staff will ensure that KS2 Geography National Curriculum expectations will be covered to build on the prior knowledge from KS1, with reference to the progression document. Use of the progression document ensures that the curriculum content is planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before in KS1.
- Within the UKS2 phase, staff will ensure that KS2 Geography National Curriculum expectations will be covered to build on prior learning in LKS2, with reference to the progression document. Use of the progression document ensures that the curriculum content is planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before in LKS2.
Phase and subject leaders are responsible for ensuring that the taught curriculum in each phase mirrors the intended progression of knowledge and skills mapped out for each Phase in the progression document. Therefore, ensuring previous content supports subsequent learning and pupils are equipped with the knowledge necessary for the next stage in their education and that the full content of National Curriculum is taught before children leave Parkland Primary School.
Impact
Assessing Progress
Formative Assessment:
Pupils’ progress will be assessed using regular formative assessment in lessons through strategies such as whole class questioning, regular retrieval practice, quizzing, independent learning tasks and assessment of work in books and feedback.
Each learning journey block will be assessed formatively at the end, through the use of a knowledge-based quiz and/or a high-quality independent skills application outcome. Teachers will use this assessment to provide further feedback or re-teach concepts where necessary to close gaps and ensure pupils have mastered the curriculum content at that point.
Assessing long-term learning:
The identified non-negotiable knowledge for Geography, for each learning journey will then be re-tested through a knowledge-based retrieval task. This will happen on three separate spaced occasions to secure long-term knowledge acquisition and be used for more summative purposes.
Skills will be sequentially re-visited and built upon due to the coherently planned and sequenced progression mapping across the school.
Tracking Pupil Progress:
- Pupil progress within the subject will be tracked through the use of low threat knowledge-based retrieval tasks at the end of each unit taught.
- Scores from these low threat knowledge-based retrieval tasks are to be tracked in the back of the Learning Journey book.
- These retrieval tasks will be revisited a month after the unit is completed and again a term after the unit is completed to assess retention of knowledge taught.
Individual progress is reported to parents through two termly Parents’ Evenings and an end of year report.
History - Intent
A high-quality history education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand 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.
Aims of History knowledge-led curriculum:
To ensure that all pupils:
- Know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
- Know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and dissolution of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and follies of mankind
- Gain and deploy a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
- Understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
- Understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
- Gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.
Implementation
Teachers work collaboratively to plan history using the learning journey planning format. History is planned using progression maps and knowledge mapping to ensure teaching is designed to help learners to remember, in the long term, the content they have been taught and to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts.
For the wider curriculum we block learning and re-visit practice over time through a spaced practice approach (Learning Scientists, 2016) as research suggests this will lead to better long-term retention of knowledge. Retrieval practice is a fundamental part of our history curriculum as it is proven to strengthen memory and make it easier to retrieve the information later (Rosenshine, 2012). Opportunities for retrieval practise occur in two places in the curriculum:
- Daily review to activate prior learning forms the start of most lessons.
- Retrieval practice of non-negotiable taught knowledge will happen on three separate spaced occasions away from the point of teaching the topic. This should support children in securing long-term knowledge acquisition.
Phase and subject leaders are responsible for ensuring that the taught curriculum in each phase mirrors the intended progression of knowledge and skills mapped out for each Phase in the progression document. Therefore, ensuring previous content supports subsequent learning and pupils are equipped with the knowledge necessary for the next stage in their education and that the full content of National Curriculum is taught before children leave Parkland Primary School.
EYFS
The EYFS framework is structured very differently to the national curriculum as it is organised across seven areas of learning rather than subject areas. The skills taught across EYFS do feed into our history curriculum. The most relevant early years outcomes for history are taken from the area of learning entitled, ‘Understanding the World’.
KS1/KS2
In planning for progression, teachers are often introducing pupils at KS1 to historical periods that they will study more fully at key stages 2 and 3. Our history progression map is used by teachers to ensure that there is progression in knowledge and skills through the school. These areas of knowledge and skills are segmented into the following strands: Chronological understanding, events, people and changes in the past, historical vocabulary, historical enquiry, and historical interpretation.
History topics will be taught in blocks to provide deep learning opportunities. Where appropriate, teachers should combine overview and depth studies to help pupils understand both the long arc of development and the complexity of specific aspects of the content. A humanities unit will be taught once per half-term (whether that be history or geography and will vary per year group; dependent on the objectives to be covered). Each block will be roughly two weeks in length and follow the structure planning outline below:
| Stage | Key features of the teaching and learning | Assessment |
| 1-Macro Level |
| Prior knowledge Daily review Use of knowledge organiser to quiz throughout |
| 2 – Micro level | Go deeper into an enquiry-based question or area of the unit. Choose a relevant question or strand and outcome with which you can focus on a specific element of the unit: link to ‘Events People and Changes in the Past’ strand of progression document. In Key Stage 2, children may write an extended response at the end of the week. For example: Local History Study: What was the impact of World War One on the local area? | Daily review Use of knowledge organiser to quiz throughout Formative assessment against progression map criteria for the extended answer to the enquiry-based question Formative knowledge quiz at the end of the block |
Effective Teaching of History
Parkland Primary School prides itself on being a research informed school. Following staff training on Rosenshine’s Principles in Action (Sherrington and Caviglioli, 2019) school teachers are expected to actively present material and structure lessons using the ten principles of instruction below. These principles not only facilitate the memorising of information, but allow pupils to understand it as an integrated whole, and to recognise the relationships between the parts. This does not mean that every lesson needs to follow the exact structure or sequence and this is not intended to be used as checklist for each lesson; these elements can occur at different points in a lesson, or over a sequence of lessons, and can be integrated in different ways and at different times.
Impact
Assessing Progress
Formative Assessment:
Pupils’ progress will be assessed using regular formative assessment in lessons through strategies such as questioning, regular retrieval practice, quizzing, independent learning tasks and assessment of work in books and feedback.
Each learning journey block will be assessed formatively through the use of a knowledge-based quiz and/or a high-quality independent skills application outcome e.g. musical composition or piece of artwork. Teachers will use this assessment to provide further feedback or re-teach concepts where necessary to close gaps and ensure pupils have mastered the curriculum content at that point.
Summative Assessment:
Assessing long-term learning:
The identified non-negotiable knowledge for history, for each learning journey will then be re-tested through a knowledge-based retrieval task. This will happen on three separate spaced occasions to secure long-term knowledge acquisition and be used for more summative purposes.
Skills will be sequentially re-visited and built upon due to the coherently planned and sequenced progression mapping across the school.
Tracking Pupil Progress:
- Pupil progress within the subject will be tracked through the use of low threat knowledge-based retrieval tasks at the end of each unit taught.
- Scores from these low threat knowledge-based retrieval tasks are to be tracked in the back of the Learning Journey book .
- These retrieval tasks will be revisited a month after the unit is completed and again a term after the unit is completed to assess retention of knowledge taught.