At Mosspits Lane Primary School, the Humanities subjects of RE, History and Geography are taught in interconnected ways that enhance and enrich learning. 

The school uses Opening Worlds - a knowledge-rich humanities programme for teaching History, Geography and Religion in Years 3 to 6, with some aspects of the History programme beginning in Year 2, Summer term. The programme meets and substantially exceeds the demand of the National Curriculum for History and Geography. The Religious Education programme is compatible with the objectives of SACRE locally-agreed syllabuses in RE but substantially exceeds the knowledge-base and the resourcing of this. The school continues to use the SACRE scheme for EYFS and KS1, integrating both to provide a widely diverse and all-encompassing RE curriculum for all pupils. 

The programme is characterised by strong vertical sequencing within subjects (so that pupils gain security in a rich, broad vocabulary through systematic introduction, sustained practice and deliberate revisiting) and by intricate horizontal and diagonal connections, thus creating a curriculum whose effects are far greater than the sum of their parts.

Opening Worlds Humanities programme distinctive features:

• thoroughness in knowledge-building, achieved through intricate coherence and tight sequencing;
• global and cultural breadth, embracing wide diversity across ethnicity, gender, region and community;
• rapid impact on literacy through systematic introduction and revisiting of new vocabulary;
• subject-specific disciplinary rigour, teaching pupils to interpret and argue, to advance and weigh claims, and to understand the distinctive ways in which subject traditions enquire and seek truth;
• well-told stories: beautifully written narratives and the nurture of teachers’ own story-telling art;
• a highly inclusive approach, secured partly through common knowledge (giving access to common language) and partly through thorough high-leverage teaching that is pacey, oral, interactive and fun;
• efficient use of lesson time, blending sharp pace, sustained practice and structured reflection;
• rapid improvement of teachers’ teaching through systematic training in the Opening Worlds evidence-informed, high-leverage techniques.
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The most noticeable impact is that pupils can access the rich, extended text in the booklets because all new vocabulary is pre-taught and practised through blends of direct instruction, engaging story-telling and other activities. An outline of the Humanities curriculum is available on the Opening Worlds website.

The programme is so powerful that we have taken the philosophy and pedagogy and implemented this hiqh quality practice in planned History and Geography units in KS1.