At Mead Vale Primary School, our vision is for all children to Work Hard and Be Kind through our core values of Courage, Curiosity and Community. Through our delivery of humanities subjects at Mead Vale, we aim to engage, inspire and challenge pupils to have the courage to question the reliability of information shared about the past and be curious about how their futures have been shaped by past events and the ever changing world around us. This will allow them to develop a much greater appreciation for current events today, making them better decision makers and more compassionate as people. The humanities curriculum aims to develop every child’s cultural capital through embedding powerful knowledge in a subject-based, enquiry-led curriculum. We want children to know and be curious about the world around us and how it has changed over time, celebrating diversity and contributing to the culture, creativity and wealth of our local and national community

From September 2023, we have adopted the Opening Worlds humanities curriculum for history, geography and RE for year 3 to 6.  

Opening Worlds curriculum and its associated teaching approaches will secure the highest possible quality of education for pupils. This is because the curriculum ensures that the subjects reflect the wide reference and academic practices, outside of school, to which they refer. In addition the material is organised so that pupils use earlier material to access to later material and so that pupils start to see how everything connects within a subject.

Opening Worlds has strongly recommended that the material is taught in sequence because each part makes the next part much more understandable.  Numerous words that are explicitly taught and practised in Year 3 are then taken for granted in lessons in Year 4-6.  If children do not have the secure knowledge of the content and vocabulary of the Year 3 curriculum this is likely to slow progress and limit enjoyment.

All key stage 2 children have, therefore, started with the Year 3 Opening Worlds curriculum.  As a result of moving from the school’s previous curriculum to Opening Worlds, the school has identified a small number of content gaps.  These have been noted and will be addressed through our choice of books that are used in English and read to children, field trips and acts of collective worship.