“History teaches everything, including the future”
Alfonse De Lamartine
The History Department aims to inspire a love of history in our students and an appreciation of its importance, using where appropriate active learning strategies. We aim to instill a curiosity about the past, that will project forward into a life-long love of the subject.
We aim to provide a fully inclusive and challenging curriculum that inspires engagement and resilience in all learners whilst also providing them with the historical knowledge that will enable them to understand the world we live in today. We want students to use History’s unique concepts to construct arguments, support them and to become analytical citizens who can question human motivation and society with skill and confidence.
‘A study of the events of the past can help people to understand how the current world has been shaped and critically engage with it. The History curriculum provides students with the contextual knowledge they need to understand the world they live in, inspiring their curiosity and encouraging them to think deeply about the topics studied. The course is taught chronologically, with students studying key events from the Anglo Saxons to the 20th century, with an emphasis on the development of British society and the interaction between Britain and the rest of the world, leading to the multi-cultural society we live in and which is particularly relevant to Childwall students. Local enquiry is embedded in our curriculum with students considering the Domesday entries for Childwall and the local area, the impact of the slave trade on Liverpool and migration to the UK and Merseyside.
The curriculum is designed to link skills with knowledge and has been planned backwards, with students being taught challenging skills, historical enquiry and contextual knowledge from year 7 onwards with themes of power, warfare, religious change and society running throughout the key stages and becoming more challenging as students progress.
The course also aims to provide students with essential life skills; a high standard of literacy, an ability to undertake healthy debate, analysis and evaluation, research, organisation, sifting of information, communication etc. The department provides an environment where students can engage with history and develop holistically without fear of failure
The curriculum has been designed chronologically with KS3 building contextual knowledge and skills and GCSE and A-Level delving deeper into certain topic areas.
Students have a legal entitlement to learn about certain topics at KS2 but have all had different experiences of this, therefore in their 2nd lesson in year 7 they complete a baseline assessment so that the curriculum can be adapted to their needs
KS3 is designed around a series of enquiry questions, encouraging students to develop their analytical and discussion skills and introduces students to the skills and contextual knowledge they will need throughout their study of history. The ‘big concepts’ studied are cause and consequence, significance, source analysis and communication skills.vThe number of topics taught has been reduced in order to allow key areas to be analysed in more depth, to maintain a breadth of learning and to allow more time developing transferable skills. Students also complete ‘engaging home’ and ‘meanwhile elsewhere’ homework in order to increase their contextual and world knowledge as well as involving carers more closely with their learning. Aspects of local history are taught across the years in order to raise students’ awareness of the impact of the past on their local area. Our KS3 curriculum also aims to provide a good foundation and smooth transition for those who opt to study the subject at GCSE.
KS4 modules have been designed to meet the needs, abilities and interests of students at the school. The Migration unit allows students to develop their understanding of the multi-cultural society they live in whilst the Elizabeth module deepens their knowledge of British culture and history. The America and Cold War units have been chosen to support each other as well as to develop students’ awareness of the modern world and the reasons for the dominance of America in the 21st century.
At KS3 and 4 there is a core curriculum that is then differentiated to meet the needs of different students. A number of activities are designed with core, extension and killer tasks in order to meet the needs of all learners and all teachers adapt lessons in order to meet the needs of all students that they teach
The KS5 course builds on GCSE with students deepening their knowledge of Russia and undertaking a module that looks at Modern Britain from 1945. The NEA focuses on the treatment of Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries.
To see an overview of the curriculum and how parents can support their child's learning, please click here.
Ambitious activities are those that take your regular curriculum further. They take the subjects you study in the classroom beyond that which your teacher has taught you or what you’ve done for home learning. For example, you may go into more depth on something you picked up in the classroom or learn about a new topic altogether. These activities are normally in the form of extra reading, but they can take many other forms, like watching videos online, downloading podcasts, attending lectures, visiting museums or entering academic competitions.
In the future, employers or universities will be interested to hear about what ambitious activities you have engaged in; they will be interested in what you have learnt and impressed by your efforts. Click here for further details.
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