In History and Geography, we want children to make sense of the world around them – to understand how places work and how the past has shaped the present.
We want all our children to leave us as curious enquirers who ask good questions about places and the past; confident investigators who can read maps, weigh up evidence and interpret what they find; and thoughtful young people who understand their own locality and its place in a wider, diverse world.
Both subjects are taught as topics, linked to other areas of the curriculum, through an enquiry-based approach. Children develop their skills across three main topics each year, and each topic is framed by an enquiry question that guides the learning – one pupils answer for themselves by drawing their learning together at the end of the term. Alongside the knowledge they gain about each place or period, they build real subject skills: in History, chronological understanding, historical enquiry and interpretation; in Geography, location and mapping, human and physical features, and fieldwork. Children record their thinking through mind maps and individual Learning Journeys, and capture their activities in an Online Journal.
We make excellent use of our local area, with visits for every year group that give children first-hand experience of their locality. Our curriculum is deliberately built to represent a diverse range of people and histories, rooted in a local context and personally meaningful to the children we teach. We review it regularly to keep it creative and relevant, and pupils themselves help decide how they explore a topic and how they present what they have learned.
Silvia Barber, Curriculum Team Leader