Humanities
"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all of those acts will be written the history of this generation."
Robert Kennedy
Intent
Our Humanities curriculum is designed to ignite curiosity and deepen understanding of the world—past and present. Through carefully sequenced units in History and Geography, we aim to equip children with the knowledge, skills, and vocabulary to explore significant events, people, places, and environments. We want our pupils to ask thoughtful questions, make connections across time and space, and develop a strong sense of identity and global citizenship. Alongside this, through exploring their locality, our children learn about their past and how this has shaped their lives and the lives of members of our community. We are committed to ensuring that children not only learn more but remember more. Our curriculum is structured to revisit key concepts and knowledge regularly, helping pupils to embed learning into their long-term memory.
As Historians, we bring the past to life for our pupils and aim to deliver lessons which will spark their enthusiasm and curiosity. Children investigate a range of sources, and through perceptive questioning, gain an understanding of the similarities and differences between different periods in history and the impact this has had on present day. Our children learn about significant figures and historical events and gain an understanding of chronological order.
As Geographers, our children will gain an understanding of the world – its continents and oceans, and extend their place and locational knowledge outwards from West Bretton, Wakefield and Yorkshire to countries located much further afield in the continents of Europe, and North and South America for example. The children will examine both human and physical geographical features and how these have changed overtime.
Implementation
As we have mixed age classes at West Bretton, the humanities are taught at on a 2-year cycle from year 1. In Foundation Stage, children are taught around thematic events and child led topics. This comes under the learning of ‘Understanding the world’. Particular themes are adult led and explored to ensure that the skills of exploration and investigation are nurtured. In particular learning about, ‘Past and present’, ‘People, Culture and Communities’ and ‘The Natural World’ leads into learning in year 1.
In both History and Geography, our children start by learning about their own environment and events that they are familiar with or that they can relate to.
In History, as they progress through the school, children are given the opportunity to go back further in time and investigate periods they may be less familiar with, ensuring that they have a good understanding of important changes, as well as how each period links to, and impacts upon the next.
In Geography, the children’s learning journey starts with very familiar areas that they can relate to such as their own house, and the village of West Bretton and extends further afield to other parts of the world as they progress.
Our children are engaged in these subjects through enquiry-based learning and inspirational teaching ideas and stimuli such as ‘Hook days’, trips and visiting speakers. We instil the fundamental curriculum objectives of history and geography into our children through a dynamic, practical approach. Our 'topics' are led by a driver question with each subsequent lesson under this driven by smaller key questions. Each of these smaller questions builds on the prior one with the aim of answering the driver question. This builds on Rosenshine's small step theory.
As West Bretton is one of the oldest schools in Wakefield, much time is spent looking through our primary resources to gain an understanding about life in the past. Close links have been made with local farms and the National Coal Mining Museum of England in order to give pupils a greater understanding of this.
Impact
Through studying history and geography, our children will gain an understanding of how the past has affected the present and that their actions as global citizens will affect the future.
As historians, West Bretton pupils will be able to talk confidently about events, people and places from the past and present and represent their learning in a variety of ways. They will understand and be able to explain (using key vocabulary) how and why these important historical features compare, contrast and impact upon how we live today. Our children will leave West Bretton with the ability to investigate, question and analyse different sources and information.
As geographers, our pupils will be confident at locating places using a range of maps, globes, atlases and digital media. The children will be able to:
- Compare and contrast many different aspects of geographical similarities and differences
- Have a deep understanding of human activity in the world, both positive and negative
- Carry out fieldwork, building on prior skills and analyse any gathered data
- Describe a location using correct geographical vocabulary.
Please see our two year humanities overview below:
