Shaftesbury Abbey School
Intent Statement for Humanities
Intent
At Shaftesbury Abbey Primary School, we aim to develop the whole child. Our priority is to create conditions to stimulate their natural curiosity and apply their creative thinking. Our curriculum has been designed to empower all our pupils to have curious minds and become active, confident, independent learners. We embrace and celebrate every child’s uniqueness by continually providing opportunities to develop their resilience, knowledge and skills, thus providing them with the vital skills for the future. At Shaftesbury Abbey Primary School we aim for all pupils to receive a broad experience of the Humanities subjects. Our history lessons aim to encourage children to develop their enquiring minds and our geography curriculum encourages children to appreciate the world around them. Geography and History will feature significantly in many of the termly projects taught in our school.
Implementation
Planning and Curriculum Coverage
At Shaftesbury Abbey Primary School, we teach Humanities through an enquiry-based approach, following the Connected History and Geography schemes. These take children through a series of ancillary questions which ensures that they learn direct skills in a progressive system and are building on their knowledge each year. The long-term planning informs which topics will be covered each term by each Key Stage. This provides teachers with an outline/ framework for planning weekly topic lessons. The variety of topics taught in KS1 and KS2 provide our pupils with opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills outlined in the National Curriculum’s programme of study.
Teaching and Learning
In order to best meet the needs of our pupils, we use a variety of teaching and learning styles in our humanities lessons. We will provide some whole class teaching alongside opportunities for small group-based discussion tasks and independent research. We encourage children to ask, as well as answer, questions about their topics. In both history and geography, we will provide children with an opportunity to use a range of sources and data, including maps, statistics, graphs, pictures, photographs, information books and the internet. Children will participate in discussions and problem-solving activities and will prepare reports to present back to the class. We provide suitable learning challenges by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We differentiate by starting point, prior learning, ability and resources and by providing support where necessary. Our topics are often enriched by including educational off-site learning at such places like Stone Henge, The Tank Museum and The Roman Baths. These educational visits bring the children’s class-based learning of Humanities to life and provide many practical, hands-on experiences.
Impact
Assessment
Our intent and implementation strive to ensure that children know and remember more about geography and history through their learning. We measure this using a variety of assessment techniques. One of the important aspects of assessment is that it supports future planning and teaching of humanities. At Shaftesbury Abbey Primary School, summative assessment is integrated in all parts of the teaching and learning process. It is done on a day-to-day basis and provides teachers and pupils with knowledge of what has been learnt and how to overcome gaps in learning. Teacher based summative assessment informs the basis for marking pupils work and giving feedback. A more formal assessment of pupils also takes place at the end of each term through knowledge grids which are completed before the topic, and then subsequently after to show the knowledge gained. National curriculum level descriptors are used to assess the attainment of pupils in geography and history.