Teaching and Learning in Humanities

What can parents expect from our teachers in Humanities

Entry routines

Staff will meet and greet students at the door.

Following the BLM there will be a recall / refresh / connect activity on the board to engage students. Students will also be in the routine of completing the date and title during this time.

Staff will complete the register and circulate the room to check completion of starter task.

Review of recall / refresh / connect activity.

Sharing of success criteria

Titles of lessons are posed as a question and the SC is designed around helping students to answer this question.
After the recall / refresh / connect activity staff will share the success criteria of the lesson with students to help students identify how they can make progress.
SC will allow for new knowledge / skills to be delivered in small steps and will be used at appropriate points within a lesson to check for understanding / reflect on progress.

Teaching to the top - challenge for all

In Humanities we want all students to engage in challenging content which is why our teaching philosophy is to teach to the top and to scaffold appropriately to support all students to access our subjects. All students will work towards the same goals so as not to limit any potential progress. We believe in a inclusive education in which pushes all students to fulfil their full potential.

Challenge in lessons will be evident in a number of ways:

Verbal questioning episodes -

Appropriate thinking time dependent on the complexity of the question
cold calling to challenge every student to think
Tell me more / Expand / snowballing techniques
Socratic questioning
Open questions
Use of blooms to promote HOTS
Targeted questions
Pose-pause-pounce / pose-pause-share-pounce

(During verbal questioning when appropriate staff will encourage oracy skills by ensuring students answer questions in full sentences and in depth).

Increasing difficulty in planned questions throughout tasks / lesson.
Vocabulary - with a focus on ensuring understanding and use of more aspiration tier 2 and tier 3 vocabulary.
Level of scaffold
Models of high level answers

Support for Lower attaining in mixed ability groupings

All students are taught the same content as we aim to teach to the top and provide scaffolding for our LA pupils to access the same level of challenge as their peers. We believe that prior attainment should not limit what is to taught in the future.

Strategies used to scaffold the learning include:

Clear and accessible success criteria
Dual coding
Pre-teaching of vocabulary
Use of writing structures
Modelling - I do, we do, you do / use of visualiser
Differentiated resources

Other forms of support include:

Peer support is provided through the use of mixed ability groupings were possible and appropriate.

Staff are aware of individual needs of students and will make recommended adjustments to support all students in making good progress.

Collaborative learning

Collaborative learning and the use of Kagan strategies is a whole school approach to teaching and learning and will be evident in our lessons were appropriate to encourage equal participation and to develop oracy skills.

Assessment and feedback in Humanities

Staff will complete all planned formal assessments in line with the frequency of marking outlined below. Between History / Geography assessments will vary to cater for the different knowledge and skills of subjects and focus of assessments. Some assessments will focus on assessing knowledge retention while others will allow students to demonstrate their ability to discuss topics in depth. Assessments planned across the year ensure that all relevant skills are included and that assessments become more challenging through the years.

There are some variations to how feedback is given from whole class approaches to individual marking against a pre-written success criteria. There is no expectation for of acknowledgement marking or individual written comments in books. What is consistent however is that all feedback will involve helping students to understand what they have done well and what they need to do to improve. Students will demonstrate their understanding of this feedback by ensuring that they act on it, this will be evident through the use of purple pen in books which demonstrates their new progress.

Assessment feedback will be evidenced in books with the use of green feedback sheets.

Frequency of formal marking -

KS3 - 5 x year (roughly 1 per term)
KS4 1 x per half term (including 2 x PPEs in Year 10 and Year 11)

Other forms of feedback that will be evident in lessons / book reviews.

Whole class feedback
On the go marking
Regular verbal feedback (no expectation to record this).
Sample marking - Whole class feedback
Peer / Self-Assessment opportunities

Rewards in Humanities

Stars of Week - Weekly each member of the team will nominate one student across all their teaching groups as their 'Star of the Week'. This will result in a positive letter being sent home to parents.

Postcards - Within individual classes staff will also give out praise post-cards to students demonstrating outstanding attitudes to learning and meeting the schools 3Rs of respect, resilience and responsibility.

Positive phone calls - staff to spend 30 minutes each week on home communications including phone calls.

House points - Staff will issue house points throughout lessons.

Promoting Literacy in Humanities

Students will be given opportunities to practice extended writing.
Structure slips will be used to support extended writing opportunities and removed when appropriate / PEE / PEEL structures are used within Humanities with a focus on develop the explanation / expansion of response. The focus is to work beyond simple PEE paragraphs but the structure remains a foundation for writing.
Focus on developing understanding of command words and strategies to tackle given command words.
A greater focus of teaching Tier 2 / Tier 3 vocabulary to students.
Reading episodes are delivered by the teacher / students with high reading ages to model effective literacy skills. Tier 2 / 3 vocabulary is discussed during reading episodes to ensure comprehension of text for everyone.
Written model answers will be provided to raise aspirations and expectations of extended written tasks.

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