Curriculum Intent
History provides a coherent body of knowledge and understanding of key aspects of our past and, in reflecting our diverse school community, the wider world. At Bishop Stopford’s School we seek to engage our students in finding out more about their past. As Bob Marley once sang ‘If you know your history, then you will know where you are coming from’. Our teaching therefore equips our students to be perceptive and critical in their thinking, and to learn how and why we use historical sources of evidence to weigh up arguments and develop perspective and judgement.
We believe that the driving force of studying history is that it has the power to change the way that students see and understand the world and the significant events that have happened within it. We also value the importance of students understanding of the diversity of societies, their own identity and the wide range of experiences, connections and transformations that have occurred over time and which have shaped the world that we live in today.
Student Learning Journey
The ethos of the History department is built on the philosophy that History education should build a deepening knowledge of the past, a respect for its people and an appreciation of how historians make sense of the past. Given our diverse school community, it is also vital that History education sows seeds of enquiry and a thirst for knowledge enshrined in ‘knowing your history’ should inform who we are and ‘where we are coming from’.
The foundation of History is based on the building blocks of teaching disciplinary knowledge with a focus on:
- cause and consequence
- change and continuity
- historical significance and judgement
- interpretations of the past
- using historical sources
Through our curriculum, students study specific examples of how historians have studied and analysed the past, and of how they have constructed and presented accounts of the past, creating a schemata about how historians study the past and develop interpretations of the past.
Students, over the course of the topics studied in each year group, and then at GCSE/GCE level (if chosen), will develop their knowledge and understanding to make valid judgements about the foundation blocks of history – causation, change over time, similarity and difference, seeing significance in historical events and people in history, and using sources and interpretations to understand how people view history through different perspectives and lenses.
Students will learn and acquire knowledge about a range of historical events that have shaped and determined the world that we live in today, gaining an understanding of political, social, economic, cultural developments over time. In order to gain full insight into the history of Great Britain and the world in which we live students will study a range of topics throughout key stage 3 -5
Key Stage 3 History
Throughout the different units of study that we have chosen from the National Curriculum at KS3 we consistently teach and learn the key disciplinary knowledge of:
- making connections
- drawing contrasts
- analysing trends
- framing historically-valid questions
- creating structured accounts, written narratives and analyses
The units of study, in keeping with the national curriculum, reflect our aim to help Bishop’s pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.
Our pupils therefore develop an understanding of how people’s lives have shaped Britain and how Britain has played a major part in influencing the wider world and are able to deploy the skills mentioned above whilst doing so.
The various units engage our students in considering how Britain has significantly changed over time via conquest, religion, protest, invention and expansion, and how is it still changing and remaining relevant and important today.
Within this context we endeavour to equip our students with a sense of historical knowledge and understanding that allows them to be inquisitive, challenging and appreciative of the value of history.
Key Stage 4 History
In KS4 pupils will consolidate the knowledge and understanding that they have developed in KS3. Edexcel GCSE History allows our pupils to develop and extend their knowledge and understanding of specified key events, periods and societies in local, British, and wider world history; and of the wide diversity of human experience.
Edexcel History also encourages them to be independent learners and critical and reflective thinkers with the ability to ask relevant questions about the past, to investigate issues critically and to make valid historical claims. Also to develop an awareness of why people, events and developments have been accorded historical significance and how and why different interpretations have been constructed about them.
The programme of study is as follows:
- Medicine Through Time
- Superpower Relations and the Cold War
- Early Elizabethan England
- Weimar and Nazi Germany.
How is History taught?
We fully utilise self-regulation and metacognition to deliberately shift responsibility for learning from the teacher to the pupil as an ultimate teaching and learning goal. Our lessons are based upon engaging starter activities, the skilful introduction of new content, supported by confident retrieval of prior learning and knowledge. All lessons provide appropriate challenge, assessment for learning and opportunities for high level questioning and insightful feedback.
The other bedrock of the history department lessons will be developing students writing. History is a written subject, and assessment is graded through students’ writing. For students to make progress in history they need to be able to effectively communicate their knowledge and understanding in the written form. Thus across the curriculum time will be spent in class explicitly teaching writing. This should manifest itself in lessons through the use of modelling. Teachers explicitly use the ‘I do, we do, you do’ strategy to model expectations to students. Modelling is differentiated by teachers for different classes, providing additional support to learners who need it and modelling how to develop responses further to stretch the most able.
Homelearning
- At KS3, extended learning tasks are favoured and are used to build upon, as well as extend student’s work. They are seen as a way of challenging and engaging students as well as developing their independent learning skills important for future life.
- Homework at KS4 should be set weekly, although the tasks set will be dependent on the class, the course they are taking and the stage of the course they are at. At KS4 much homework will be completing past exam questions.
