At Clare Community Primary School the humanities focus is divided into its two specific subjects of History and Geography. This enables children to develop their knowledge and understanding of each area and over time use skills from each to support their learning in the other subject. Both History and Geography encourage children to look closer at their understanding of the world around them and to ask enquiring questions. Both subjects enable children to engage in important issues facing humanity including sustainability and social change, allowing children to develop the skills necessary to interpret the past and present.
In Geography we focus on the four key areas of learning (location knowledge, place knowledge, human, environmental and physical geography and geographical skills and fieldwork). These areas are built on with each topic focus and throughout the children’s time in primary school. Throughout the wide range of topics from Seasons to the Amazonian rainforest, the children gain an in depth understanding of the world around them and how to use geographical skills to interpret this information correctly. Further to this, we spend time looking more locally and examining our familiar surroundings and how these can be affected in a wide range of ways and comparing our location to others across the globe.
In History, we place great importance on developing the pupils' chronological understanding. Our lessons include activities that involve the use of timelines to locate the period, person or event, and to consider it in relation to other periods studied and the present day. The sequence and selection of topics build on previous units and feed forward to future learning. The Year 1 unit titled 'My Family History' is an introductory unit that links with common themes of family, home, and change covered within EYFS. Within KS2, the British history units follow a chronological approach to support pupils in developing a clear long-term narrative across history. Throughout, the pupils are guided to make links between the topics taught. The lessons aim to provide pupils with a clear understanding of how people lived in the past and what they considered important. We cover recurring themes such as settlement, migration, and religion, which create a stronger web of knowledge and ensure that it sticks with the pupils. Through this content, pupils will develop an understanding of how we learn about the past through various sources of evidence. As their confidence grows, they will consider the utility and reliability of these sources.