A guide to

Introduction

Cambridge Lower Secondary Humanities is an international curriculum that supports learners to develop their curiosity about our world and its people. Through their studies of people, the past and places, learners develop knowledge and skills to prepare them to be informed, engaged and empathetical members of their communities.

In Cambridge Lower Secondary Humanities, learners explore the world, its people and places, locally, nationally and globally, in the past, present and future. They develop knowledge, understanding and skills related to:

• how the world works and changes – key concepts, events, processes and interconnections
• how they make sense of the world – worldviews*, narratives, ideas, interpretations and explanations
• their role in the world as informed individuals and community members
• diversity in the human, natural and physical world
• questioning and reflecting to broaden and deepen understanding and inform future thinking
• humanities and social sciences subjects, to support progression to future study and a lifelong interest in these subjects.

* A worldview is a way of looking at the world. It is a complex set of preconceived beliefs, values and expectations about our world, that we use, consciously or unconsciously, to make sense of it. Every individual has their own personal worldview which is formed through individual life experiences and shapes how they perceive everything around them and the decisions they make.

Teaching Cambridge Lower Secondary Humanities

We provide a wide range of practical resources, detailed guidance, innovative training and professional development so that you can give your learners the best possible experience of Cambridge Lower Secondary Humanities.

We believe that for teaching and learning to be effective, there should be alignment between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. We have designed Cambridge Lower Secondary Humanities around this principle:

Pedagogy

For a deep understanding of the Cambridge Humanities curriculum, we recommend you use our Enquiry Approach.

Enquiry Approach

The approach emphasises the acquisition of knowledge and systematic development of discipline-specific skills, allowing learners to actively engage with a Humanities topic. This enables learners to build a comprehensive understanding of the world, while developing the necessary skills to critically engage with their learning and peers. The Enquiry Approach helps you plan engaging, rigorous and challenging medium-term plans for your learners.

Central to our Enquiry Approach is the enquiry question. To answer the enquiry question, learners conduct an enquiry that requires them to research, analyse and present information, while reflecting on their learning journey and developing their Humanities knowledge and skills.

Each enquiry comprises a number of lessons that focus on the question, and may relate to one, two or all three strands in the Humanities curriculum: People, Past and Places.

• Step 1: Get curious
• Step 2: Explore
• Step 3: Share
• Step 4: What's next?
• Reflect - integrated throughout the Enquiry Approach

You can download the Cambridge Humanities Primary and Lower Secondary Enquiry Approach Guide from the Cambridge Lower Secondary support site.

Example enquiries

There are example enquiries on the support site that include all the learning objectives. These are designed to give you the flexibility to teach them without adaptation, adapt some elements to suit your learners and context, or use the structure and activities as the basis for planning your own enquiry.

You can use the Learning objectives by enquiry spreadsheet on the support site to check which learning objectives are included in each of the example enquiries.

To further your understanding, follow these instructions:

• Select a learning objective from the Learning objective exemplification table that you would like to teach.
• Use the Learning objectives by enquiry spreadsheet to identify enquiries that contain your selected learning objectives.  Choose one enquiry that you would like to explore.
• Identify and download your chosen enquiry.
• Read through the enquiry and consider the following questions:

Is this enquiry suitable for your learners and context or do you need to adapt it?

Do you need to select or find alternative content and/or resources that are suitable for your learners and/or context?

Success criteria

In the example enquiries, we indicate where there are opportunities for you to monitor your learners’ progress.

Below are examples of success criteria taken from one of our example enquiries.

In the example enquiry you downloaded earlier, identify opportunities to monitor your learners’ progress and find the suggested success criteria in a table located in the beginning of the enquiry under the learning objectives.

Decide whether you need to edit the success criteria to suit your context or achievement of your learners.