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History Curriculum

Exploring the Past, Shaping the Future

Art and Photography

Why study History?

What history develops

  • Develops our understanding of how society has grown and changed over time
  • Introduces us to different people, cultures and places from the past
  • The skills of looking at evidence and forming your own ideas about what happened
  • Your speaking and listening skills; helping you to share your thoughts clearly 

Student voice

“I enjoy history because we get to look at evidence and work together to analyse it and make our own judgements.”

Key Stage 3 History– Cycle Overview

Cycle 1

Year 7 – Life in Anglo-Saxon England

Knowledge focus

What was life like for the Anglo- Saxons? What were the consequences of the Norman Conquest of 1066?

Key skills

  • Gathering historical evidence to judge continuity and change 

  • Making judgements on positive and negative impacts on England 

Assessment

  • Historians' interpretations
  • Source analysis

Key Vocabulary 

  • Golden Age 
  • Trial
  • Society
  • Religion
  • Conquest
  • Claimant
  • Power

 

Year 8 – Advances in African Kingdoms

Knowledge focus

The development and consequences of the transatlantic slave trade, the civil rights movement and its legacy.

Key skills

  • Comparing developments across different kingdoms

  • Assessing what makes a good leader 
  • The importance of military power
  • Assessing the economic, social and political causes and consequences of the development and abolition of the transatlantic slave trade 

Assessment

  • Source inference and utility 
  • Making judgements on the significance of factors to assess continuity and change

Key Vocabulary 

  • Trade
  • Natural resources
  • Economy 
  • Empire
  • Transatlantic Slave Trade
  • Middle Passage
  • Plantation
  • Abolition

Year 9 – World War 1

Knowledge focus

Causes and consequences of the First World War.

Key skills

  • Judging main causes of the outbreak of global conflict 
  • Assessing the importance of sources such as propaganda
  • Judging positive and negative, and short and long-term consequences of conflict 

Assessment

  • Source utility 
  • Historians' interpretations
  • Assessing short and long-term impact

Key Vocabulary

  • Militarism 
  • Alliances
  • Imperialism
  • Nationalism
  • Total war
  • Propaganda
  • Trench Warfare
  • Treaty of Versailles 
  • Armistice 

Cycle 2

Year 7 – Medieval and Early Modern Islamic World

Knowledge focus

Exploring the development of ideas and trade in the Medieval and Early Modern Islamic World, examining the rise and ruling of absolute monarchs in Medieval England. 

Key skills

  • Judging if a period was a ‘Golden Age’
  • Examining how ideas and trade flourished and flowed across different geographical and chronological contexts  

Assessment

  • Source inference
  • Assessing positive and negative impact
  • Judging how significant individual monarchs were to continuity and change  

Key Vocabulary 

  • Monarchy 
  • Religion 
  • Islamic World 
  • Literacy 
  • Medicine 
  • Absolute monarch 
  • Divine right 

 

Year 8 – The Enlightenment

Knowledge focus

The development of reason and knowledge during the Enlightenment, life, power and politics in Georgian Britain. 

Key skills

  • Assessing how the development of key concepts led to societal change
  • The importance of individuals in shaping ideas and their impact
  • The development of the British state and the consequences for social, political and religious life in Britain  

Assessment

  • Source utility
  • Judging the significance of major developments
  • Making sustained judgements  

Key Vocabulary 

  • Enlightenment  
  • Rationality 
  • Individualism 
  • Scepticism  
  • Georgian 
  • Democracy 
  • Rebellion

Year 9 – Dictators of the Twentieth Century 

Knowledge focus

The rise of dictators in the twentieth century. The atrocities, consequences and lasting legacy of the Holocaust. 

Key skills

  • Comparing key themes in how dictators rose to and maintained power
  • Examining the impact of conflict in the rise of dictators
  • Assessing the increase in Anti-Semitism in Germany to further understand its consequences during the Holocaust    

Assessment

  • Source inference and utility
  • Gathering historical evidence to make and explain judgements
  • Evaluating short and long-term impact  

Key Vocabulary 

  • Dictator 
  • Terror 
  • Cult of personality  
  • Propaganda 
  • Holocaust 
  • Genocide 
  • Nuremberg Laws 

 

Key Stage 4 History – AQA History

Cycle 1 

Year 10 – History of Medicine

Knowledge focus

Exploring the history of medicine in Britain 1250-present. 

Key skills

  • Judging the reasons for continuity and changes in ideas and practices relating to medicine
  • Assessing the significance of individuals and major social changes to shape medical knowledge  

Assessment

  • Explaining similarity and difference
  • Assessing significance to make sustained judgements  

Key Vocabulary 

  • Four Humours 
  • Astrology 
  • Miasma 
  • Transference 
  • Renaissance 
  • Humanism 
  • Printing press 
  • Infection 
  • Germ Theory 

Year 11 – The Cold War

Knowledge focus

The Cold War 1941-1991 and relations between the superpowers of the USA and USSR.

Key skills

  • Examining the course of the Cold War to understand this modern type of conflict
  • Explaining the consequences of changes in leadership, context and global changes  

Assessment

  • Explaining consequence
  • Writing a narrative account of major events to assess their importance
  • Explaining how significant events shaped international relations 

Key Vocabulary 

  • Cold War 
  • Diplomacy 
  • Mutually assured destruction 
  • Detente 
  • Arms race 
  • Nuclear weapons 
  • Soviet Union 
  • Satellite States 

Cycle 2 

Year 10 – World War 1 Medicine

Knowledge focus

Medicine on the Western Front and Weimar Germany. 

Key skills

  • Source utility to judge significance of medical progress and impact of nature of warfare on this
  • Using a source to further historical investigation
  • Explaining cause and consequence  

Assessment

  • Source utility
  • Assessing and explaining the reasons for economic, political and social change  

Key Vocabulary 

  • Trench warfare 
  • Trench Foot 
  • Blood transfusions 
  • X-Rays 
  • Royal Army Medical Corps 
  • Weimar Constitution 
  • Armistice 
  • Treaty of Versailles 
  • Hyperinflation  
  • Economic reform  

Year 11 – Early Elizabethan England 

Knowledge focus

Learning about the early Elizabethan period 1558-1588

Key skills

  • Identifying the main features and challenges of Elizabethan society
  • Examining religious challenge and change
  • Assessing the importance of foreign policy and the reasons for the expansion of exploration   

Assessment

  • Describing key features of Elizabethan society and government
  • Making sustained judgements
  • Explaining challenge, policy and change  

Key Vocabulary 

  • Elizabethan  
  • Tudor 
  • Religious Settlement 
  • Illegitimacy  
  • succession 
  • Foreign policy 
  • Circumnavigation 
  • Spanish Armada 
  • Golden Age 

Cycle 3 

Year 10 – The Rise of Hitler 

Knowledge focus

The rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party. Nazi consolidation of power and life in Nazi Germany  

Key Skills

  • Evaluating the main reasons for the Nazi Party’s rise to power
  • Assessing how Hitler was able to consolidate power and transform Germany into a dictatorship, leading to an analysis of the impact of Nazi polices upon different groups in society, including the persecution of different groups.  

Assessment 

  • Source inference and source utility
  • Explaining the importance of key individuals and events in this period
  • Analysing historians’ interpretations and making judgements to support and challenge their arguments.  

Key Vocabulary 

  • Chancellor 
  • Reichstag 
  • Dictator 
  • Fuhrer 
  • Persecution 
  • Gestapo 
  • Propaganda 
  • Police State 
  • Totalitarian  

For Key Stage 5 Curriculum information please click here to our Sixth Form Curriculum

 

Key Stage 5 History

Cycle 1

Year 12

Knowledge focus

  • Revolutionary Russia (Russia AQA Paper 2N) and Henry VII (Tudors AQA Paper 1C) 

Key skills

  • Analysing the beginning of significant periods in history – notably the communist revolution in Russia and the onset of the Tudor dynasty  

Assessment

  • Source value, historians’ interpretations, assessing causes, consequence, impact and significance    

Key Vocabulary 

  • Revolution 
  • Autocracy 
  • Tsar 
  • Communist 
  • Marxism 
  • Foreign policy 
  • Legitimacy 
  • Dynasty  
  • Consolidation  

Year 13

Knowledge focus

  • Stalinist economic policy and propaganda (Russia AQA Paper 2N) 
  • Edward VI and Mary I (Tudors AQA Paper 1C) 
  • Continuing the NEA on the Civil Rights Movement (1860s-1960s) 

Key skills

  • Collectivisation and the Five Year Plans in the 1930s and the importance of propaganda in promoting this. Examining if and how there was a mid-Tudor crisis and how each monarch navigated this. 

Assessment

  • Source value, historians’ interpretations, assessing causes, consequence, impact and significance   

Key Vocabulary 

  • Collectivisation 
  • Five Year Plans 
  • Targetmania 
  • Cult of personality  
  • Economic policy 
  • Mid-Tudor Crisis 
  • Succession 
  • Reformation  

 

Cycle 2

Year 12

Knowledge focus

  • Bolshevik consolidation of power in Russia in the 1920s, The early years of Henry VIII’s reign  

Key skills

  • Assessing the main challenges facing the Bolsheviks following the October Revolution and how they consolidated their power. Finance, foreign policy and religion in the reign of Henry VIII 

Assessment

  • Source value, historians’ interpretations, assessing causes, consequence, impact and significance    

Key Vocabulary 

  • Consolidation 
  • Civil war 
  • Foreign policy 
  • Comintern  
  • Reformation 
  • Absolute monarchy 
  • Illegitimacy  
  • succession 

Year 13

Knowledge focus

  • Terror in Stalinist Russia and their rearmament and foreign policy, Elizabeth I’s reign  
  • Continuing the NEA on the Civil Rights Movement (1860s-1960s). Submission before Easter.  

Key skills

  • Evaluating the impact of the use of terror in Stalin’s Russia and its use to further his economic policy. Elizabeth I’s challenges at the start of her reign at home and abroad.

Assessment

  • Source value, historians’ interpretations, assessing causes, consequence, impact and significance   

Key Vocabulary 

  • Terror 
  • Gulag 
  • NKVD 
  • Show trials 
  • Succession 
  • Illegitimacy 
  • Religious Settlement  

 

Cycle 3

Year 12

Knowledge focus

  • Leadership struggle in Russia, Henry VIII’s later reign 
  • Year 12 also begin their NEA in the Civil Rights Movement from the 1860s to the 1960s which they continue throughout cycle 1 and cycle 2 of Year 13. 

Key skills

  • Examining the leadership struggle among leading Bolsheviks following Lenin’s death which led to the emergence of Stalin as a dictator. Exploring the importance of Henry VIII’s ministers and his foreign and domestic policies 

Assessment

  • Source value, historians’ interpretations, assessing causes, consequence, impact and significance   

Key Vocabulary 

  • Cult of personality 
  • Diplomacy 
  • New Economic Policy (NEP) 
  • Foreign policy 
  • ministers 

Year 13

Knowledge focus

  • Revision of all A Level content for Russia (Paper 2N) and Tudors (Paper 1C) 

Key skills

  • Collectivisation and the Five Year Plans in the 1930s and the importance of propaganda in promoting this. Examining if and how there was a mid-Tudor crisis and how each monarch navigated this. 

Assessment

  • Source value, historians’ interpretations, assessing causes, consequence, impact and significance   

Key Vocabulary 

  • All key vocabulary from across the papers will be revised.