History & Geography Curriculum Decisions (Part 2)

As I said in Part 1, these posts are a record of my reflections during and after a workshop led by Christine Counsell on shaping the primary curriculum. Part of this workshop involved a summary of the research on prototypes by Eleanor Rosch. Rosch found that the more prototypes we have for a particular word, the better we read because the faster we can select the correct prototype for the context. As a result, it is vital that we support children to develop as many prototypes as possible in order for them to be competent readers who can access texts on a wide variety of topics.

I found myself thinking a lot about the best way to develop as many prototypes as possible.

Is it by studying everything about a topic in one block within at most a six week period? Even if we follow up on that say 2 or 3 times in future years, is that enough?

What if we planned to expose children to lots of examples throughout the key stage, teaching the in depth content in smaller sections where possible?

Considering the research on the benefits of retrieval practice, would this also help children to remember more of the material in the long term?

In this post, I’m going to outline some strategies for increasing the number of exposures children receive to key concepts. Having started to write this, I’ve thought of lots more strategies as I went along, so I’m going to split the strategies across two posts, one for class teachers below, and a third and final part for subject leaders and senior leaders who are making curriculum decisions.

Strategies for class teachers

• Ten minute pre-reading activities

Identify the most important concepts and vocabulary children must understand by the end of the year (only up to 5 otherwise it will be too much, and ideally high yield words that are relevant to several different areas of the curriculum). Select a few picture books, poems or short stories which the concept or word is a central part of to share with the class. Spread them out across the weeks or months before teaching the relevant topic so that children experience several exposures to the word in different contexts before they need to use it in new learning.

For example, a big topic in my year group is Migration. At the beginning of the year, I found several picture books on the topic of animal migration, which included examples of a wide variety of animals that migrate for different reasons. We read these in story times spread across the autumn term, so that before starting the main block in the spring term, children had a good understanding of what the term meant in a familiar context. For each book we had a brief discussion about the reasons why the animals were migrating to prepare children for later learning about the reasons why people migrate.

• Cross-curricular links

Look at your overview for the year (for all subjects not just history and geography) and identify links. By this I mean thinking in a little more detail about the content you will be teaching in each unit and looking for common themes that can be exploited. This doesn’t mean that you need to teach all of the linked units in the same term – in fact it could be more effective for them to be spread throughout the year so that children are continually being reminded of their prior learning, and adding extra examples from a different context.

For example, one of my RE units is on Passover. At the start of the year, when I was looking at the plan for the year, I identified an opportunity to prepare children for their learning on migration through this unit (to my great excitement!). Some of the key words we learn during the migration unit are persecution and flee. I saw the opportunity to link this with the exodus from Egypt. Additionally, we learnt that the reason the Israelites initially migrated to Egypt was famine. This week we created a list of reasons that people might emigrate, and the first suggestion was famine. I was momentarily stunned until I made the link to Passover, which was our first unit back in September.

Capitalising on these links doesn’t have to involve anything elaborate or time-consuming. It simply involves placing slightly more emphasis on these key words and concepts whenever they arise in the course of a lesson. I point out to children that this is an important word/idea that will be useful later in the year, and make sure they all say the word. If the opportunity arises, we might find the word in a text we’re reading, or recall the definition. Based on the famine example above, this seems to be fairly effective.

• Links to class texts

When you read each class text prior to introducing it to the class, keep an eye out for links to any concepts that appear elsewhere in the curriculum, either in your own year group or in others. Identify opportunities for pre-teaching, so that children are able to use their knowledge from across the curriculum to develop a deeper understanding of the text. As above, I’m not suggesting teaching texts at the same time as units from across the curriculum, just spending a little time highlighting the link to the children at the relevant point.

For example, we read The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe in Autumn 2. I identified a number of opportunities for revisiting and building on prior learning in order to enhance children’s experience of the text. Non-fiction reading about beavers, their homes and how their bodies are adapted to their habitats built on Year 4 work on habitats, and could provide a useful example when the class learn about adaptation in Year 6 science, as well as helping children to better imagine Mr & Mrs Beaver’s house. Revisiting the Easter story and having a discussion around the concepts of sacrifice, resurrection and victory meant that children immediately understood what was happening and saw the links with the Bible when Aslan returned to life, as well as preparing children for our Easter RE by embedding the events of Holy Week. Reading Aesop’s The Lion and the Mouse was a good opportunity to build in a fable, which will prepare children for learning about the impact of the ancient Greeks in the summer term, revisited their knowledge of features of a fable from Year 3, and deepened understanding of the scene where Aslan is on the Stone Table.

• A curriculum links display

For some time, I have printed and displayed key words for each new topic. This year, instead of taking them down and replacing them when I started a new topic, I have left them on the board. I have recorded examples we discussed during lessons around the word cards, and moved the cards around so that linked concepts are together. This helps children see how we are building our understanding of each new word we come across throughout the year.

• Regular short input

Some objectives are better suited to being taught little and often than spending one or two lessons learning about them in more depth.

For example, developing children’s locational knowledge in geography is an ongoing process throughout the whole of each key stage. Having a list of questions and vocabulary which is revisited every time we come across a new country provides children with far more prototypes than teaching one or two full lessons each year. I’m going to include the link to Aiden Severs’ (@thatboycanteach) comprehensive list of questions to ask about places, in case you haven’t already come across it. http://www.thatboycanteach.co.uk/2019/06/geography-key-questions-place-national-curriculum.html Knowing which geographical concepts are particularly relevant to the curriculum in your year group can really enrich children’s vocabulary. For example, the concept of borders and thresholds comes up often in foundation subjects and class texts, so when we find new countries on a map or atlas, I always ask children how many countries it shares a border with and we name them.

In history, regular activities to develop children’s understanding of chronology help to fully embed this concept. Every time we read a new poem, listen to a piece of music, read a book that is set or was published in the past, or learn about a new person or event, I ask the children to place it in context of the other people and events they have already studied. I now have children who remember that William Wordsworth published Daffodils in 1807, know that this was before Queen Victoria took the throne but after the Great Fire of London, and are able to explain what was happening in our school’s local area at that time.

These regular activities are also useful for identifying misconceptions or gaps in knowledge, which can be filled at the next opportunity. For example, when they were ordering a set of events they had already learnt about before starting new learning in history, I identified that the children were confused about the terms BCE and AD, and was able to address this.

Implementing the above strategies does not need to be elaborate or time-consuming. Most of them can be done in any spare slots of 5 – 15 minutes, planned in as lesson starters  or form a brief part of another lesson. However, they provide high returns in terms of children’s knowledge, vocabulary development, and confidence as they are increasingly able to make links between their learning in different subjects.