Intent

• To deliver a broad and balanced curriculum, which includes ensuring children are able to access cross curricular subjects like Geography, History and RE regularly.  
• To have a deeper understanding of the world that we live in by learning in a cross curricular, creative and experiential way.  To ensure that the diversity of our children and the community that they come from is reflected in what we teach.  The Anthropology & Humanities curriculum teaches the children about their backgrounds and experiences as well as those of people around the world.  
• To understand modern and ancient history and how it impacts the way that we live today.
• To understand the local, national and wider world that they live in and develop an understanding of how physical features reflect the human geography of how people live.
• To develop a broader understanding and respect for the 6 main religions following the agreed Hackney Syllabus
• To develop a broad balanced curriculum.  “We recognise children’s strengths, interests, diversity and learning needs, in order to promote a culture of acceptance.” – Learning about the lives and histories or people around the world promotes this culture of acceptance 
• Within Geography and History, we also teach children “basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values” with creativity being “pivotal and used throughout”

In Geography, children learn about:

• place
• space
• scale
• interdependence
• physical and human processes
• environmental impact
• sustainable development
• cultural awareness
• cultural diversity

Children make progress in history by developing:

• their knowledge about the past (this knowledge is often described as ‘substantive knowledge’)
• their knowledge about how historians investigate the past, and how they construct historical claims, arguments and accounts (often described as ‘disciplinary knowledge’)

Implementation

“Learn more, remember more” – writing topics in literacy usually link to the cross curricular topic. This allows for children to use their subject specific vocabulary in a real-life context. This also means children are able to make meaningful connections between their learning.

• Each year group will complete 2 Geography and 3 History topics each year
• RE has dedicated learning one whole day at the beginning of each half term.
• During a 6 week unit only 2 lessons are to be written, other lessons are to be experiential and creative with learning evaluated at the end of the lesson.
• Children are expected to say what they know at the beginning and what they have learnt at the end of each topic.  Senior Leaders talk to the children about their learning.
• Heavy focus on vocabulary – children learn and apply subject specific vocabulary throughout their work. 
• WOW Day - End of point of each topic, where children celebrate, make links and evaluate their learning with the aim of remembering and understanding more. 
• Mapping Skills Day – Specific day to work on mapping skills to begin each geography half term. Allows children to re-familiarise themselves with maps and geographical vocabulary, as well as to learn new skills. 
• Quick quiz – Formative assessment that is done weekly at the beginning of lessons throughout the school to assess what the children know and remember.  
• Each topic has a knowledge section that has been added to the skills cover sheet. This section has the essential knowledge that we expect our children to know at the end of a topic. How this is taught is up to the individual year groups however progress will be assessed on these expectations.
• To improve our creative learning all year groups will be moving to using the big book model for recording and sharing learning.

Impact

• By the end of a topic all children will be able to know and talk about what they have learnt. They will be able to talk about the essential pieces of knowledge as well as the process of learning using key vocabulary. children will make links to other areas of their learning.
• Topic work will be more creative and encourage children to learn more – remember more.
• Children will be enthusiastic about their learning and use the vocabulary of learning when talking about what they have learnt.

If you would like to know more about this area of the curriculum, please talk to Sian Maciver.

History & Geography and the EYFS

Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.

Early learning goals that link to history are :

EYFS Understanding the world

ELG Past and present

• Talk about the lives of people around them and their roles in society.
• Know some similarities and difference between things in the past and now, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class.
• Understand the past through settings, characters and events encountered in books read in class and storytelling.

In the EYFS the children...

• Look at pictures of themselves now and themselves as babies, and talk about how they have changed.
• Learn about families – children, parents, grandparents – and relate to the past, eg parents were once babies, then children etc.
• Learn vocabulary that helps them to talk about the past, present and future such as yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week, this week, next week, last year, this year, next year, a long time ago.
• Listen to stories that are set in the past.
• Compare things in the past and now, linked to our topics (eg emergency vehicles, houses, space rockets etc).
• Learn the names of some significant people from the past (linked to our topics).