Humanities

To view our Humanities frameworks please click below:

History Framework 

Geography Framework

Curriculum Vision and Intent

· Explore the purpose & meaning of their lives

· Build their sense of identity & self-worth

· Develop the values that will help them to become active, inclusive and thoughtful citizens.

We want all our pupils to leave The Mendip School as independent as possible in caring for themselves and/or their career/future. Preparing pupils to be responsible caring citizens who are curious about the world ensures that they develop self-esteem and build on the resilience they need out in the community for their voice to be shared and for them to feel heard. In order for our pupils to reach their full potential in our curriculum is broad, balanced and aims to create an educational experience that prepares pupils for adulthood. Our curriculum is unique and bespoke for each of our learners and/or cohorts to continually build on their knowledge and skills. Our focus is to encourage and support knowledge and skills based learning school that can be transferrable into the wider community with real-life situations and first-hand experiences.

Curriculum Implementation (Formal, Life skills and Holistic)

The Humanities curriculum is split into three subjects, History, Geography and Religious Studies.

Each area of study has a framework which supports learning of skills and knowledge.

Every term a topic is followed, some examples are, inventions and discoveries, where things grow/recycling, castles/knights/invaders and local environment/history. Humanities is taught explicitly for one hour a week but it is also embedded in religious festivals and cross curricular activities.

Studying Humanities gives children the opportunity to develop an understanding of why the world and its people are the way they are today. Children are encouraged to ask and answer questions, evaluate evidence and present points of view on what they have learnt.

The curriculum is personalised for pupils and it adapts its approaches to the curriculum for pupils with different needs and in different school phases. The school phases include:

Holistic curriculum

For our holistic curriculum the focus is for pupils to have exposure of historical, geographical and religious events through real life scenarios. This could be visiting Signiant local historical sites such as Glastonbury Tor or local castles. We believe that our pupils learn best when they experience things in real life.

Evidence will be demonstrated on evidence for learning and will often be real life activities and learning rather than work in books.

Formal curriculum

In EYFS and KS1, activities are planned in relation to “Understanding the world” in a cross curricular way through topic areas that are engaging and enjoyable. We use Autism Attention techniques to engage learners in knowledge and skills from the Understanding the world curriculum.

During KS2/KS3 pupils will learn about British History from the Stone Age to the present day and will look at connections between different time periods and their own lives. We broke the curriculum down into different aspects of learning to support delivery of the content and topics i.e. In the History Learning profile B1 & B2 levels are broken down into Knowledge and skills, changes within living memory, significant historical events, significant people, local history, significant global events and life in different periods.

In KS3/kS4 some pupils are able to follow the National Curriculum and are able to access the ASDAN qualification.
Our aim is to offer regular trips or in house experiences each term to promote a love for learning and enhance real life experiences. We believe that learning in a real life environment brings more than academic reward, but it inspires pupils to want to see and do more.

Life skills

These pupils mostly follow the holistic curriculum in order to support them to live as independently as possible after their school journey. Life skill pupils have a bespoke curriculum including Personalised Learning Goals (PLGs), EHCP targets and EQUALS curriculum.