Humanities
History
Intent
History plays an important part in our school curriculum and it is popular with all our pupils. We aim to inspire their curiosity so that our pupils are actively involved in their learning.
Our curriculum provides our pupils with a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We want them to develop a clear historical perspective so that they can piece together their growing knowledge and fit it into different contexts. In this way they learn to respect how people and events in the past have shaped the way that we live now.
Implementation
Our history curriculum is taught through topics which are chosen following the requirement of the National Curriculum but with a common thread of historical concepts running through them all. The key concepts taught across each topic are ;
- Chronology
- Change and Continuity
- Characteristic Features
- Cause and Consequence
- Counter Argument
- Similarities and Differences
- Significance.
Our history curriculum is further enriched through regular opportunities for all of our pupils to visit museums and sites of historical significance and to take part in workshops led by specialised visitors to our school.
At Key Stage 1 we value the importance of stories in our history teaching. Pupils listen and respond to stories and use sources of information to help them ask and answer questions. They learn how the past is different from the present. Our pupils handle artefacts and look at pictures so that they begin to build a visual memory bank of the past and use simple historical words and phrases.
At Key Stage 2, as our pupils continue to build their knowledge and understanding of the past, they also learn to become more critical thinkers. They learn that the past can be represented and interpreted in different ways and so they develop their ability to investigate and reflect on different versions of events. They begin to pose and investigate their own questions about the past and they share their ideas in many creative ways including writing, art, drama and ICT.
Impact
Our history education enables our pupils to gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It inspires our pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. We aim that our teaching will equip our pupils to develop the wisdom to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps our pupils to respect and 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.
The National Curriculum for history aims 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-vaild questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narriatives and analyses
- understanding the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguements 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.
Geography
The main purpose of our Geography curriculum is to instil a sense of awe and wonder about the world around us. We aim to develop a sense of curiosity and fascination within all of our children, to encourage them to think for themselves, to take initiative, to ask questions and investigate our world.
At our school we want to instil a lifelong love of Geography, therefore we try to use real places, real experiences and real issues to make Geography come alive. The teacher’s use their knowledge of pupil’s interests, and the children’s own personal geographies to celebrate the diversity within our school community and to develop a deepened understanding of the world around us. We use a variety of multi-media resources including ICT to engage our children and allow them to independently select and research a broader range of geographical information.
By encouraging our children to think geographically we hope to enrich their social, moral, and cultural development. We are committed to developing ‘Geographers for Life’ and instilling them with investigative and problem-solving skills for use both inside the classroom and beyond. With these skills we hope to develop our children into educated citizens who can make a valuable change to our world.
A high-quality geography 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 Christ Church we will equip our 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 our 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, this will help our pupils understand and develop their skills to provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.
Aims
The National Curriculum for Geography aims 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 geographical context for understanding the actions of processes
- understanding 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
- 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 and writing at length.