Humanities

Statement of intent:

Art, craft and design embody some of the highest forms of human creativity. A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment and create their own work. As pupils progress, they should be able to think critically and develop a more rigorous understanding of art and design. They should also know how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation. Art education should foster an enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts, and a knowledge of artists.

The writing of this policy, alongside the ‘Long Term Curriculum Implementation Plan’ has been informed by the school’s research into best practice. Key sources used to inform school practice include membership access to the NSEAD publications and resources and a comprehensive summary of research findings in to the teaching of art.

Aims of our art curriculum:

• produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences
• become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques
• evaluate and analyse creative works using the language of art, craft and design
• know about great artists, craft makers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.

Heap Bridge teaching process/pedagogy:

 

Implementation Planning:

Subject Knowledge & Curriculum Planning

To ensure a clear focus on the above priorities the school has set out a detailed ‘Long Term Curriculum Implementation Plan’  which clearly sets out a progression framework for pupil’s acquisition of knowledge, skills and understanding across the range of curriculum content taught from Year 1 to Year 6.

Use of sketchbooks

Sketchbooks are used from Year 1 through to Year 6 to regularly record, collect and investigate ideas, images and wider research, relevant to current and ongoing work. The sketchbook will provide a solid evidence base for the work pupils undertake within the ‘investigate & research’ and discover & connect’ aspects of the art and design teaching process, enabling pupils to develop their ideas in a central, personal space, from year to year.

Sketchbooks will also provide a place for year group assessment overviews, to mark the beginning of each school year’s programme of work and provide an area for teachers to record their ongoing assessment of pupils work and artistic development.

Collaborative Projects: Our local area...

Over the past few years the school has worked collaboratively within the Arch Alliance and local community to develop large scale art projects, linked to local history and working with a range of local artists.

An example of one these projects is represented below.

Impact

The impact of our work in art is assessed using the end point statements at the end of the implementation plan. This is evidenced through children's finished artwork, sketchbooks and the discussions teachers and school leaders have with pupils about their learning. A sample of children's experiences across the curriculum can also be seen on our school blog.

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.

 

Aims

The national curriculum for art and design aims to ensure that all pupils:  

• perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians
• learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
• understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the inter-related dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

 

Attainment targets  

By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study.  

KS1  Pupils should be taught to:

• use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes
• play tuned and untuned instruments musically
• listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music
• experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the inter-related dimensions of music.

 

 

Key stage 2  

Pupils should be taught to sing and play musically with increasing confidence and control. They should develop an understanding of musical composition, organising and manipulating ideas within musical structures and reproducing sounds from aural memory.

KS2 Pupils should be taught to:

• play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression
• improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music
• listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
• use and understand staff and other musical notations
• appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians
• develop an understanding of the history of music.

Music

Statement of Intent:

At Heap Bridge Village Primary School, we aspire to ensure that each and every one of our pupils develops in to a positive, pro-active learner who is proud of their achievements and well prepared for a successful life. Delivered through a vibrant curriculum, we believe that learning should be enjoyable, purposeful and challenging. We will equip pupils with the skills and dispositions they need for lifelong learning, teach them the importance of being pro-active, taking ownership of their own futures and ensuring they develop the highest expectations for themselves in their pursuit of excellence. We will do this within a safe and supportive environment of mutual understanding, positive relationships, respect and tolerance. Regardless of any barriers to learning, we will ensure that we work in partnership with school stakeholders to ensure that every child in our school can be proud of what they achieve.

In designing a high-quality and ambitious history curriculum, we intend to give pupils a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Through carefully thought out plans and an enquiry led approach to learning we aim to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. Our history curriculum is designed to help pupils 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.

The writing of this policy, alongside the ‘Long Term Curriculum Implementation Plan’ has been informed by the school’s research into best practice. Key sources used to inform school practice include membership access to the Historical Association’s publications and resources and a comprehensive summery of research in to the teaching of history as detailed in ‘History 5-11, A guide for teachers’ (Third edition) by Hilary Cooper.

Aims of our history curriculum:

• develop an interest in the past, understand human achievements and learn about the major issues and events in local, British and world history;
• develop a growing and coherent knowledge of chronology together with an understanding of the similarities and differences between historical periods and that change and progress are not necessarily the same;
• understand that people’s actions are influenced by their attitudes and values and that these may change over time;
• appreciate and explain the variety of causes of historical events;
• understand the nature of evidence by emphasising history as a process of enquiry, by developing a range of historical skills and by reinforcing that historical explanation is provisional, debatable and open to different interpretation;
• foster the values and attitudes associated with the respect for evidence, the toleration of a range of opinions and the appreciation of the value of cultural diversity;
• develop their knowledge and understanding of other countries and cultures along with the history of the roles and relationships of men, women and children from different social and economic groups;
• develop important cross-curricular intellectual and social skills, including the ability to observe, analyse and communicate;
• help pupils become critical, independent, creative thinkers;
• develop within pupils a genuine love for history.

 

Development of knowledge, skills and understanding

The objectives of history teaching in the school are based on the requirements of the National Curriculum Programmes of Study for Key Stages 1 and 2. The history curriculum of the school will ensure pupils experience the following key aspects of study:

• Chronological understanding;
• Knowledge and understanding of events, people and changes in the past;
• Historical interpretation;
• Historical enquiry;
• Organisation and communication.

 

Implementation Plan:

Subject Knowledge & Curriculum Planning

To ensure a clear focus on the above priorities the school has set out a detailed ‘Long Term Curriculum Implementation Plan’ which clearly sets out a progression framework for pupil’s acquisition of knowledge, skills and understanding across the range of curriculum content taught from Year 1 to Year 6. This framework also supports teacher planning and our current development of pupil ‘knowledge organisers’ (Key Stage 2) which link to our recent focus and research in to the use of spaced learning and quizzing strategies to support the longer term retention of knowledge acquisition.

Knowledge Organisers

Parents can click on the images below to download the knowledge organisers for each unit of work. These documents contain the key knowledge, chronology and vocabulary that your child will need to know and include much of what they will be assessed on as the unit progresses and within the end of unit assessment.

Samples of our knowledge organisers,

 

Statement of Intent:

At Heap Bridge Village Primary School, we aspire to ensure that each and every one of our pupils develops in to a positive, proactive learner who is proud of their achievements and well prepared for a successful life. Delivered through a vibrant curriculum, we believe that learning should be enjoyable, purposeful and challenging. We will equip pupils with the skills and dispositions they need for lifelong learning, teach them the importance of being pro-active, taking ownership of their own futures and ensuring they develop the highest expectations for themselves in their pursuit of excellence. We will do this within a safe and supportive environment of mutual understanding, positive relationships, respect and tolerance. Regardless of any barriers to learning, we will ensure that we work in partnership with school stakeholders to ensure that every child in our school can be proud of what they achieve.

Within our geography curriculum we aim to inspire in pupils a lifelong curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. In line with our school aims we will encourage them to develop respect and concern for all people, including those whose heritage, culture or religion is different from their own. As pupils progress, children will increase and deepen their locational and place knowledge as well as their understanding of physical and human geography in order to develop their geographical skills. We will help children to reflect upon their own impact on the earth and encourage them to form an interest in taking care of the world and its resources.

At Heap Bridge we are keen to develop the long term memory of our children and give opportunity to revisit and recap prior learning in order to support them to know more, remember more and do more.

Aims of our Geography Curriculum:

• To stimulate children's interest and foster a sense of wonder in the world around them including the physical and social conditions in different parts of the world whether that be locally or worldwide.
• To help pupils acquire a wide range of geographical knowledge and skills to enable them to understand the relationship between where they live, the Earth and its people.
• To help pupils understand that the character of places derives from the interaction of people and environment, by increasing their locational and place knowledge through the use of engaging lessons, fieldwork and first hand experiences of the world.
• To develop an appreciation of the how and why human actions change the environment locally, nationally and globally and how we can have a positive impact on our world whilst encouraging other to do so.
• To enable children to understand the Earth’s features, the processes that give rise to key physical and human features of the world, how they change over time and the impact that this has on people and their lives.
• To develop concern, respect and a sense of responsibility towards the global community and how we can contribute to be an inclusive community.
• To develop the geographical skills needed to collect and analyse information gathered through first hand experiences of the environment and to carry out geographical enquiries relevant to their year group.
• To enable pupils to interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and communicate geographical information in a variety of ways.
• To provide our children with first hand experiences of the world in order to develop their place knowledge and apply their geographical skills in a range of real life contexts whilst gaining an appreciation for different ways of life.
• To monitor and evaluate the quality of teaching and learning and regularly assess the standards of pupil achievement across Foundation Stage, Key Stage One and Key Stage Two.
• To use geography to develop pupils' thinking skills, skills in literacy, numeracy and computing in order to promote pupils' awareness and understanding of gender, cultural, spiritual and moral issues.
• To provide cross-curricular opportunities that enable children to identify the connections between subjects and topics and how we can apply our knowledge and skills into a range of different contexts.
• To support the development of geographical knowledge and skills through a range of texts that are revisited throughout other aspects of the year group curriculums.
• To ensure that our geography curriculum is accessible to all children within our school, including those who have SEND, EAL or other additional needs through relevant adaptations.

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Development of knowledge, skills and understanding

The objectives of geography teaching in the school are based on the requirements of the National Curriculum Programmes of Study for Key Stages 1 and 2. The geography curriculum of the school will ensure pupils experience the following key aspects of study:

• Locational knowledge
• Place knowledge
• Human and physical geography
• Geographical skills and fieldwork

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KS1&2 Curriculum Overviews:

Implementation Plan:

Subject Knowledge & Curriculum Planning

To ensure a clear focus on the above priorities the school has set out a detailed ‘Long Term Curriculum Implementation Plan’ which clearly sets out a progression framework for pupil’s acquisition of knowledge, skills and understanding across the range of curriculum content taught from Year 1 to Year 6. This framework also supports teacher planning and our current development of pupil ‘knowledge organisers’ (Key Stage 2) which link to our recent focus and research in to the use of spaced learning and quizzing strategies to support the longer term retention of knowledge acquisition.

Impact

The impact of our work in geography is assessed using the end point statements at the end of the implementation plan. This is evidenced through children's work and the discussions teachers and school leaders have with pupils about their learning. A sample of children's experiences across the curriculum can also be seen on our school vblog.