At St Michael’s we believe that Humanities is an essential part of the curriculum; a subject that not only stands alone, but also should be an integral part of all learning. We want humanities to inspire, challenge and engage pupils to learn about the world they live in and gain a deep understanding of how humanities has shaped our society today. We also aim to stretch imaginations, nurture curious minds, and provide opportunities for the children to look beyond themselves as a global citizen and ask the big questions. We believe strongly that an engaging and ambitious humanities curriculum can help to raise cultural capital and develop connections through people and events in different places and cultures.

 

We want our curriculum to be representative of the children that we teach, and equip them with the transferrable skills and processes necessary to find out more about the recent and distant past, historically and geographically, which is relevant to them. It is coherently planned and sequenced across all year groups to allow children to embed the knowledge and skills from three perspectives:

• Local 

• British 

• World 

It is important for children to understand cultural, national and international history as a way of creating a shared identity and interconnections. To raise cultural capital, our pupils will study a range of cultures and historical perspectives allowing them to understand the complexities of people’s lives, the diversity of society and relationships between different groups, enabling them to be respectful and tolerant of our similarities and differences.

 

Through an engaging and active Humanities curriculum, our children will be taught to link historical and geographical knowledge and explore events with curiosity, building on arguments, weighing evidence and formulating their own ideas using critical thinking. We also want them to constantly revisit their learning and build a bigger picture in terms of change over time within society and development of knowledge. We want children to make sense of new learning chronologically and where it fits in the bigger picture, not necessarily by teaching the curriculum in chronological order. Creating timelines in all classrooms, particularly in KS2 will be central to the children's experience in order to: understand when historical events occurred, be able to compare significant events and eras and be able to have a bigger sense of understanding of world history.

 

IMPLEMENTATION:

In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in Humanities, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. At St Michael’s we aim for Humanities to have the same importance as core subjects and is taught either as a stand-alone subject or through other areas of the curriculum. We use a progressive concept-based curriculum that includes specific key questions, which are focused upon factual, conceptual and debatable content and allow for learning to be contextualized and linked clearly to other areas of the curriculum. By learning specific topics, our children encounter a broad range of knowledge whilst amassing a specific body of knowledge. This is taught to be remembered, stored in long-term memory and built on. The children are given the opportunity to develop a depth of learning which will allow them to manipulate and transfer knowledge. 

 

Our principle aim is to use high quality teaching to develop the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding of a range of humanity topics. We believe in whole-class teaching methods and combine these with active and engaging activities.

At St Michael’s we believe children learn best when:

• They have access to, and are able to handle artefacts.

• They go on visits to places of interest. 

• They have access to secondary sources such as book and photographs. 

• Visitor talks

• They listen to and interact with stories from the past. 

• They undertake fieldwork.

• They use drama and dance to act out historical events.

• They are shown, or use independently, resources from the internet and videos. 

• They are able to use non-fiction books for research.

• They are provides with opportunities to work independently or collaboratively to ask as well as answer historical questions. 

As a school, we have a very good understanding of our children and how they differ in abilities. With this in mind, we ensure we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children to flourish and achieve. 

Assessment in Humanities can take on a variety of methods across all year groups. This includes a range of summative and formative tasks:

• Writing tasks/essay questions

• Projects

• Presentations

• Quizzes/tests

• Peer feedback

• Creative tasks.

• Discussions and conversations

 

IMPACT:

The impact and measure of this is to ensure that our children at St Michaels are equipped with historical and geographical skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at KS3 and for life as an adult in the wider world. We want them to leave being able to explain how humanities fits together, how key events, people and places from one time period affect another and make detailed links across features of past societies and different historical periods. We want children to recognise causes and consequences of actions and developments over time and how that has influenced theirs and others lives. They will also have developed skills such as problem solving, asking and answering questions, collecting data, testing and evaluating hypotheses as well as developing a sense of intrigue – skills that can be applied across the curriculum and as they move onto the next stage of their learning.