HISTORY

At Thaxted Primary School, History is a practical and engaging subject which motivates and inspires our children to gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain's past and that of the wider world. We teach our children to ask questions, think critically, weigh up the evidence, sift through arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. This is all achieved in History lessons that focus on developing historical skills and the children working as historians by carrying out enquiries. Through the teaching of History, we endeavour to teach children to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

History is taught across KS1 in three-year cycles and in KS2 in four-year cycles. This ensures that all children are taught all the learning objectives in the National Curriculum and progression is clear as the children move up through the year groups. The planning of learning always begins with the skills and knowledge that need to be taught and then enrichment opportunities are carefully mapped to match our topics and embed this learning. This equips our learners with the resilience, creativity and confidence to progress to their full potential.

GEOGRAPHY

At Thaxted Primary School, our intent is that our teaching of Geography will inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people, that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

Our aim is to prepare young people with the knowledge, skills and understanding to make sense of their environment and of the world in which they live. We will increase their knowledge of our changing world, and bring awareness and understanding to current environmental problems. Our curriculum is designed to provide all of our children with the subject specific language they need to describe, question and discuss the world, as well as their place in it. Our pupils are encouraged to recognise that they have a voice and to use it confidently to debate topics that they feel passionate about.

We will provide an understanding of the local, wider and global community with a focus of both physical and human features across our world. We will encourage children to expand their knowledge of continents, countries, and cities including key physical aspects of those areas including climate zones, biomes, rivers, mountains and volcanoes; also human aspects of settlements, land use and distribution of natural resources. We aim to provide a variety of experience in fieldwork skills, including map work and we intend for our children to have real life experiences to learn about geography in an active and creative way.

Our Geography curriculum is organised into cycles: KS1 is taught over 3 year cycles and KS2 over 4 year cycles. The cycles ensure solid coverage of the National Curriculum throughout our split year groups. The coverage ensures that all children focus on the key progression skills for their year group under different topics, which allows for clear progression throughout their learning journey.