HUMANITIES CURRICULUM AIMS at GIA

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy experiences are at the heart of all learning where children have ‘hands on’ learning opportunities through real life objects, visitors or visits. Children are immersed in thematic learning based on an interleaving curriculum where new knowledge is taught, learned, remembered, revisited and applied by children ‘being’ a Geographer or Historian.

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy we believe that language development is vital for all children. We have high aspirations and support them to ‘be’ in their learning. The experiential and interleaving approach ensures that language is used by all stakeholders, including parents. Children develop good comprehension of the words they are using and are able to use them in context and accurately as part of their real learning.

We are a ‘talk rich’ school: talk is central to our curriculum and to the way our pupils learn. Children learn through talk. We believe oracy (the ability to communicate effectively) is a central means of extending pupils’ linguistic, social, emotional and cognitive development; it is key to the progress and attainment of all pupils across all areas of the curriculum.  

Retrieval practice is planned for in each Humanities lesson through ‘speak like an expert’ where children are expected to retrieve knowledge regularly that has been previously taught as a strategy to support them to move learning from the short term to the long-term memory.

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy we aim to provide a stimulating and enriching Humanities curriculum where children are inspired to find out about the world and the past. We believe children should explore their understanding of the world through a cross curricular approach, where their knowledge, skills and understanding grow through questioning and higher order learning activities.

To create

• Successful learners who enjoy learning, make at least expected progress with some children making better than expected progress to achieve excellence.
• Confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives.
• Responsible citizens who can make a positive contribution to society.
• Individuals who have a good knowledge of the world and are curious to find out about their past.
• A developmental curriculum which engages children in authentic learning experiences that reflect the individual needs of all children, including disadvantaged and pupil premium, ensuring no child is left behind.
• Children who are clearly able to explain and articulate their learning, using accurate vocabulary and terminology.
• Successful learners who build upon previous learning in order to access new knowledge and skills, retrieving learning and applying it in different contexts. 
• Confident communicators who are able to explain and record their learning within Humanities and across the wider curriculum and present it to a variety of audiences.
• Opportunities to learn outside of the classroom through home learning, minimising the possibility of children falling behind due to unforeseen time off school.

It is essential that the Humanities curriculum is organised in such a way that it provides learners with the opportunity to learn expected behaviours and be successful in their learning so that we can deliver our mission and aims.

Strategic Intent

The breadth and depth of the curriculum is designed to:

• Create an aspirational high achievement culture which allows pupils to develop as confident, responsible citizens;
• Provide a coherent, structured, academic curriculum that leads to key concepts, ideas and knowledge expecting children to apply skills through a variety of experiences and planned learning opportunities;
•  To provide cultural capital, so children have a deep understanding, respect and tolerance of the world around them;
• Take in to account individual needs and styles where ALL children experience success.

Aspirational high achievement culture

We have developed two curriculum drivers that shape our curriculum, bring about the aims and values of our school, and respond to the particular needs of our community:

• Aspirations – which help pupils to know their future possibilities and build aspirations for their lives.
• Experiences – The school provides memorable experiences which help children to engage actively in their learning by providing real ‘hands on’ experiences, supported by exploration and investigation to make links and sense of their learning, supplemented by shared experiences provided by visitors and visits to the wider community, to link to the wider world.

Coherently planned academic curriculum

Underpinned by our two curriculum drivers our academic curriculum sets out:

• A clear breadth of topics and outcomes that will be covered.
• The procedural knowledge that children will learn alongside the disciplinary knowledge that they will gain.
• Criteria for understanding the progression and sequences of learning and concepts to support retention of key knowledge
• Criteria for depth of understanding through retrieval practice and new knowledge.

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital is the background knowledge of the world pupils need to infer meaning from what they read. It includes vocabulary which, in turn, helps pupils to express themselves in a sophisticated, mature way.

Individuals

The curriculum is designed for all children to maximise their potential through carefully planned and targeted teaching, where assessment for learning provides vital intelligence on what the next steps need to be for individuals to succeed in their learning. Pre-teaching and Same Day Intervention are two strategies that are consistently applied across school to support children to experience success. The developmental progressive curriculum is designed in such a way that individual needs, strengths and next steps are built upon to ensure no child, including those who are Pupil Premium or Disadvantaged, fall behind.

Sustained Mastery

Nothing is learned unless it rests in pupils’ long term memory. This does not happen, and cannot be assessed, in the short term. Assessment therefore answers two main questions: How well are pupils coping with the curriculum content? And how well are they retaining previously taught content? This is assessed throughout the lesson on a daily basis through assessment for learning where children’s understanding of key concepts is revisited, feedback is given and acted upon and whether children have remembered is checked in future learning.

The impact of the curriculum is assessed at 3 assessment points:

• Assessment point 1 – 28th November 2022
• Assessment point 2 – 13th March 2023
• Assessment point 3 – 10th July 2023

This will support teachers to highlight clear next steps for individuals and support leaders in school in their professional dialogue around progress, CPD, subject knowledge, outcomes and lines of enquiry to follow. Impact of the curriculum is triangulated through skills, knowledge and the ability to communicate the learning.

Curriculum Implementation

• Clear planned pathway to progress from on entry to Nursery to the end of Key Stage 1 and beyond, accelerating progress in all sequences of learning.
• Learning is most effective with spaced repetition.
  • Interleaving helps pupils to discriminate between topics and aids long term retention.
  • Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.
• Whole school theme days are planned and delivered every half term, for example Remembrance Day and Heritage week. These allow children to be fully immersed in cross curricular, memorable experience-based learning that includes visits/visitors, music, dance, drama, food, and art.
• Effective communication is a vital skill which children are taught in order for them to demonstrate their learning within Humanities in a variety of different ways, including verbally and through written recordings. 
• High quality language is used and promoted at all times, including subject specific language in Tier 2 where children are expected to use this vocabulary accurately in context.
• ‘Speak like an expert’ is explicitly planned into every lesson to support regular retrieval practice where learning moves from the short term to longer term memory.
• ‘Sticky knowledge’ is key to ensure lessons are learning focused, with an emphasis on the development of children’s vocabulary. This allows children to confidently communicate their learning as a Historian or Geographer.
• Application of learning in a variety of forms allows children to demonstrate that their learning has been retained in the long term.
• Home learning is essential in minimising lost learning due to time away from school. It is planned in line with the curriculum so that no child falls behind.
• Children are provided with many opportunities to practise their learning in different contexts to ensure it is embedded into the long-term memory.
• There should be depth before breadth.  Maximise learning time in Humanities and consider the subject specific skills, knowledge and vocabulary required.
• Targeted support and additional challenge to ensure all learners make at least national rates of progress from their starting points and over time, including Pupil Premium and Disadvantaged children.
• Ensure all students’ progress is in line with national expectations in speaking and listening, reading and writing to allow them to communicate effectively as a Historian or Geographer. Learners and their teachers are ambitious to achieve more thorough deeper learning opportunities.
• Some of our content is subject specific, whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach.
• Continuous provision, in the form of daily routines, replaces the teaching of some aspects of the curriculum and, in other cases, provides retrieval practice for previously learned content. For example, climate changes in Geography is taught as a daily routine with comparisons to other parts of the world.
• The curriculum is further enriched and boosted through the wide variety of after curricular activities that are available for the infant children including a Forest Club where children will explore the school grounds and ways in which they can improve it. All children are invited to attend the clubs through an open invitation and specific children, including our most identified vulnerable children are contacted individually to ensure they have had involvement in at least one of our clubs.  

The Curriculum

We have a very broad Primary Curriculum covering 12 subjects meeting all the national curriculum requirements.

As Geographers, children will investigate and compare a variety of places, both local and internationally, through a variety of map work, questioning and different sources of information. They will investigate geographical patterns, understanding the difference between physical and human features, identify seasonal and daily weather patterns and identify land use around school. Children will communicate geographically, identifying compass directions, describing physical and human features and devising and interpreting maps and suitable symbols for these. Through their growing knowledge and understanding, children will gain an appreciation of life in other cultures, motivating them to find out about the physical world and recognise the importance of sustainability.

As Historians children will investigate and interpret the past by asking and answering questions generated from handling a variety of artefacts, looking at photographs and carrying out research. By doing so children develop the skills of enquiry, analysis, interpretation and problem solving. We aim to build an overview of World History, highlighting key events and people and the reasons behind their actions. We teach children a sense of chronology and children order and compare events and items and relate these to changes in their own lives, developing a sense of identity and cultural understanding based on their historical heritage. Thus, they learn to value their own and other people’s cultures in modern multicultural Britain and, by considering how people lived in the past, they are better able to make their own life choices today.

Classroom displays support learning consistently throughout school and celebrate children’s achievements as Geographers or Historians. These encourage children to reflect on their knowledge and skills as a Geographer or Historian.

Emphasis on vocabulary that is Geography or History specific is shared with all stake holders including parents. This is shared with parents termly. Substantive knowledge that children may struggle to understand or interpret is taught in a variety of ways including drama. Children are taught that verbal and written communication skills are imperative in order to access learning opportunities from across the curriculum.

Technology is used within Humanities lessons to enhance learning and ensure that learning is accessible for all children, no matter what their ability. We use a variety of apps and websites to broaden how children communicate and record their learning. Children are also taught how the internet can be a vital source in finding out information to develop their historical and geographical knowledge.

Additional support is provided for children who are not meeting their targets through bespoke small group intervention led by highly skilled professionals. This is monitored through pupil progress meetings and SMART targets to ensure the impact of the intervention is as anticipated in a timely manner. 

Children are given enrichment opportunities to provide a broad and balanced curriculum. This may be in the form of theme days, trips, visitors etc.

Sequential schemes of learning with clear planned learning objectives for all Humanities lessons allow children to build on prior knowledge and skills. A progressive curriculum ensures that current learning opportunities are based upon children’s previous learning, knowledge they have retained from previous lessons or the previous year group and links to year group expectations.

‘Sticky knowledge’ is carefully planned for each lesson across the curriculum, linked to the learning objective, and is progressive across a sequence of learning. This ensures that children are explicitly clear about what they are learning during each session and how previous learning will help them to develop new knowledge and skills. Children’s learning is communicated to them clearly to allow them to develop an understanding of why they are being taught what they are being taught at that particular time; how previous learning will help them and what the learning intentions are at the end of the sequence. ‘Sticky knowledge’ also provides children with the correct vocabulary and terminology needed in order to effectively communicate their learning.

A variety of strategies are taught at GIA in order to allow ALL pupils to become successful Geographers and Historians as we have an understanding that not all children learn in the same way. This ensures that no children, including Pupil Premium and Disadvantaged are left behind and achieve their full learning potential.  

Curriculum Impact

The impact of the curriculum is that by the end of the year, the vast majority of children have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they remember it all and are fluent in it. Some children will have reached a greater depth of understanding where they can apply their learning.

Children across school and from different groups can speak confidently about Humanities learning and talk about work displayed in classrooms, in books and on Seesaw or Tapestry during regular pupil voice discussions.

Children are clear about their learning and are able to confidently communicate this using accurate vocabulary and terminology from across the curriculum.

An impact of a curriculum whereby children are taught to communicate in a variety of different contexts and for a variety of purposes and audiences, allows children to confidently communicate their learning as a Geographer or Historian, both verbally and in the written form, using accurate vocabulary. A developmentally progressive curriculum, whereby children build upon they prior learning and knowledge, ensures that no child, including Pupil Premium and Disadvantaged, are left behind. All children have the tools to reach their full learning potential.

History

Geography