The Humanities
Geography
At St Thomas of Canterbury, we believe that Geography should ignite a curiosity and inspire a genuine interest about the world we live in and its people that will continue on with them for the rest of their lives.
At St Thomas of Canterbury, we enjoy learning about human and physical geography, different people and how and where they live. We strive to promote pupils’ interest and knowledge about diverse places and people around the world, as well as celebrating the diversity we have within our school, as children come from all over the world including; Africa, the Caribbean and Eastern European countries.
Pupils will leave us with the knowledge of the locations of globally significant places, including their defining physical and human characteristics. They will also understand the processes that are involved with these significant human and physical features of the world.
They will leave school being competent in a range of geographical skills, including; carrying out investigative fieldwork, interpreting a range of sources of geographical information and communicating geographical information through a variety of ways.
“Geography: learning to make a world of difference” Ofsted, 2011
Geography - Progression of Skills
History
At St Thomas of Canterbury we aim to use history to develop key skills in our children to enable them to become excellent critical thinkers. Through research and study, we ignite the children’s imagination to inspire them to understand the past and stimulate a mind full of curiosity and enquiry. History helps the children understand the diversity of societies, progression and change, cause and effect as well as developing their own identity and acknowledging the challenges of our time which enables us to make links with the future.
Throughout their time at St Thomas’ children will learn that history is challenging, with sources that are often missing parts, and requires imagination to speculate and fill in the gaps. It can change quickly with new evidence. We aim to give the children the skills and passion for a subject that is huge, by educating them with topics both from Britain and around the world.
We believe that educational visits to museums, heritage sites and galleries will deepen the children’s understanding through a ‘hands on’ approach and visually stimulate their minds.
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” Marcus Garvey
History - Progression of Skills