Geography

“You can travel the seas, poles and deserts and see nothing. To really understand the world, you need to get under the skin of the people and places. In other words, learn about geography. I can’t imagine a subject more relevant in schools. We’d all be lost without it.”

Michael Palin

Geography at Newchurch St. Mary's is a valued part of the curriculum, providing a purposeful means for exploring, appreciating and understanding the world in which we live; how it has evolved and how it continues to evolve. Geography explores the relationship between the Earth and its people through the study of place, space and environment.

In Geography, pupils learn the skills of understanding a locality and how and where people fit into its overall structure. Geography encourages children to learn through experience, particularly through practical activities and enquiry.

Our goal is for our children to become geographers. Geographers must 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.

History

‘A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.’

Mary Myatt

Our goal is for our children to become historians.

Historians must have:

An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes.
The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences.
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.
The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry.
A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways.
A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgments.
A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high-quality research across a range of history topics.