History

History in Your World: 

History, the study of the past, is all around us; we are continually making history through our thoughts,  words and actions. History is personal and global; it is everyday life and momentous occasions. History is about people. 

Our ambition is that by the end of Key stage 3, ALL students will understand how our world works. Our aim is to ensure that students have a foundation of some of the key events and features of the past that can help their understanding of life in modern Britain and how society has evolved over time. Students develop an understanding of chronology, interpretation skills, source analysis and significance, alongside substantive concepts such as monarchy, power and religious change over time. They should walk away from their history lessons having grasped key social and literacy skills that they may need for life in the workplace i.e. being able to form a debate or argument, using evidence to support their hypothesis and  understanding chronology.  They will be readers ready to hear the views of other people throughout history such as views on slavery, anti-Semitism, civil and gender rights and political change from a range of personal viewpoints to scholarship. This will enable students to experience cultures and communities from across the world and time making them less insular in their thoughts. Our curriculum will tie closely to the school’s core values, creating independent and thoughtful students who can empathise with events in the world around them. 

Our history curriculum is structured chronologically to help students understand the threads that weave through their historical understanding while learning key knowledge and skills.  This begins in Year 7 with migration to Britain from early settlement to the Norman Conquest  – ending in Year 9 with conflict in the 20th Century. Our schemes of work switch scales to provide a mixture of depth and breadth studies, from power of the monarchy to an in-depth look at the Inter-war years. This chronological approach helps to secure historical knowledge and enables students to apply their previous learning to different subjects across the school from supporting English with knowledge of the World Wars or the Russian Revolution or Religious Studies with context for the Holocaust.  It enables them to see how their subjects all interrelate to create their world.