History and Geography

History

The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.

Theodore Roosevelt

Intent

We believe History is a vitally important area for pupils to experience from a young age. Through lessons we want pupils to gain a developing knowledge and understanding of the past times in Britain and the wider world, to begin to understand the complexity of people’s lives and perspectives such as change and the diverseness of society. We challenge pupils to use their natural curiosity to explore events and develop their skills of questioning, critical thinking and objectiveness when considering evidence from different sources. Through learning about the past pupils will be given guidance and opportunity to develop and enhance perspective and judgement

Within the primary curriculum History teaching will help pupils “gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past.” It focuses on the development of historical enquiry skills to include chronological understanding, knowledge and understanding of events and the study people and places, using a range of primary and secondary sources. Class re-enactments such as ‘The Great Fire of London’ , historical artefacts, school trips and visitors are carefully planned to bring History alive.  

Our history curriculum is arranged over a four year rolling plan to ensure all pupils are able to learn about key moments in history as set out by the National Curriculum 2014. Since we are not able to run our history programme of study in chronological order (as a five class school pupils are split in Year groups at different times according to class numbers) we have sought to identify and teach pupils key historical concepts, especially in Key Stage Two.

Key Concepts pupils will meet include: Religion, Rule, Conquest & Conflict, Migration & Immigration, Trade and Society. In order to support pupil learning key knowledge (also referred to as ‘sticky knowledge’) and key dates are identified by staff each year. The Key information areas are what we expect and aim for pupils to be able to recall at later dates in order to build their historical knowledge base.

Geography

The study of Geography is about more than just memorising places on a map. It’s about understanding the complexity of our world, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exists across continents. And in the end, it’s about using all that knowledge to bridge divides and bring people together.

Barack Obama

Intent

Through the teaching of Geography we want pupils not only to gain a working location knowledge of the world around us, but to gain a deeper understanding of the natural and human world. We want to support pupils to develop problem solving and investigative skills while promoting the continued use of natural curiosity and fascination of the diverse cultures and the world around them. By the time pupils leave Baydon we want to have increased children’s interest and understanding about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

Geography is taught throughout the school to all year groups.  The aims and objectives from the 2014 National Curriculum have been taken and covered through our four year rolling long term plan which aims, whenever possible, to derive and relate to other curriculum areas to provide pupils with a more in depth and cohesive view of their areas of learning. Through lessons pupils are given opportunities to learn and practice use of geographical vocabulary, to collect, analyse and present a range of data,  to understand the actions of important geographical processes (and how they relate to give rise to the key physical and human geographical features of the world), of how geographical processes are interdependent and how they bring about variation and change to the geographical landscape, to use and interpret a wide range of sources of geographical information (including maps, diagrams, globes and aerial photographs), and to develop age-appropriate, accurate knowledge of the location, physical and human characteristics of a wide range of globally significant places including terrestrial and marine locations.

We recognise the need to revisit key concepts throughout a child’s journey. In geography we have identified these as Environment, Space and Place. Throughout the 4 year rolling curriculum these are revisited on a regular basis to provide understanding and opportunities to build upon key knowledge and learning.