Our humanities curriculum enables our children to become curious, confident and independent learners. We have tailored our curriculum to ensure it is representative and relevant of our diverse community, and inclusive of all learners.
It allows children to develop personal attributes; develop a greater understanding of their role in protecting our world and environment based on history; and have a greater understanding of how they can cause positive change and development.
The rich, comprehensive curriculum provides children with opportunities to explore knowledge and skills in an exciting way. Children have opportunities to develop their understanding and widen their knowledge by applying their continually developing skill set. We adopt a cross-curricular approach so all topics are closely linked with other areas of the curriculum to allow for a deeper dive into the subject.
The EYFS curriculum (where children learn through the topic ‘Understanding the World’) underpins the key historical concepts which children will develop their understanding of, throughout their school journey.
Key vocabulary has a focal point in each lesson to ensure children’s learning is meaningful and purposeful; and to help them make further links with the rest of the curriculum.
Big Questions (which require an open-ended answer) are also used and these aim to provide children with the platform to apply their understanding and develop children’s critical thinking skills, stimulate classroom discussion and explore ethical and philosophical issues.
We use a range of resources, including the Haringey Education Partnership resources developed by Christine Counsell and Steve Mastin, to create our bespoke humanities offer. Both subjects are taught weekly across the school except in KS1 where History and Geography are taught in alternate half terms. This provides opportunities for frequent recall and retrieval activities which further enhances children’s abilities to make connections between and across concepts and topics.
Providing children with these opportunities helps all children to develop their understanding of historical and geographical concepts.
History
History allows our children to understand the chronology and have a coherent knowledge of historical events from the past in Britain and of the wider world. It provides children with opportunities to think historically: to compare and contrast, to examine how and why things have changed, to learn about historical characters and expand their research skills, in order to develop perspective and judgement.
We teach children to be open minded and enquiring thinkers who understand cause and effect. We help them to understand how people have lived in the past and compare this to modern life. Using sources and historical evidence is a vital way to help children think critically about evidence and to help them get better at using sources to support their historical viewpoints. Educational visits, which provide first hand experiences through handling real artefacts, are also planned to enrich children’s experiences and understanding.
Geography
Geography at Welbourne is to inspire children’s curiosity and interest to explore the world that we live in and its people. We aim to equip the children with geographical skills to develop their knowledge through studying places, people and natural and human environments. Through our teaching, we intend to provoke thought, questions and to encourage children to discover answers to their own questions through exploration and research to enable them to gain a greater understanding and knowledge of the world and their place in it.
The chosen topics, which link to physical, human and environmental geography, as well as our diverse children’s backgrounds, allow children to develop their understanding of the interaction between geographical aspects of physical, human and environmental geography, in a creative and purposeful way.