History and Geography

Children are encouraged to develop an interest in the past, to appreciate past achievements and major events  – both national and worldwide – and to develop an understanding of their own and their family’s history and how values and attitudes may have changed. Pupils are taught the skills necessary for the interpretation of primary and secondary source material, artefacts, maps and visual and auditory aids, books, the countryside, ancient sites, newspapers, records and documents. The teaching of history within school is designed to support children's comprehension and reading. Each year group is assigned relevant literature which is used to equip children with wider and deeper subject knowledge. When using the literature, children have to refer to skills learnt in guided reading in order to extract relevant information and make inferences using evidence. Children are provided opportunities to demonstrate historical enquiry and draw comparisons within texts and across a range of previously taught eras. 

A successful historian will:

• Have an excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes.

• Have the ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources.

• Think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry. 

• Have a sense of curiosity about the past and an understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways. 

• Respect historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgments.

• Have a desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.

A successful geographer will have:

• An excellent knowledge of where places are and what they are like.

• An excellent understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and interconnected and how much human and physical environments are interrelated.

• An extensive base of geographical knowledge and vocabulary.

• Fluency in complex, geographical enquiry and the ability to apply questioning skills and use effective analytical and presentational techniques.

• The ability to reach clear conclusions and develop a reasoned argument to explain findings.

• Significant levels of originality, imagination or creativity as shown in interpretations and representations of the subject matter.

• Highly developed and frequently utilised fieldwork and other geographical skills and techniques.

• A passion for and commitment to the subject, and a real sense of curiosity to find out about the world and the people who live there.

• The ability to express well-balanced opinions, rooted in very good knowledge and understanding about current and contemporary issues in society and the environment.

Reading in Geography

In geography, we read a range of different types of literature including explanation, information, argument and instruction. In many geography lessons, children are required to use their reading skills, such as skimming and scanning, to find key pieces of geographical information. Furthermore, children also need to select, compare, synthesise and evaluate information from different sources. This portrays how geography lessons offer a great scope for developing students' literacy and reading skills.