Curriculum
History fires your curiosity and imagination, moving and inspiring you with the dilemmas, choices and beliefs of people in the past.
It helps you develop your own identity through an understanding of history from the personal to the global. It helps you to ask and answer questions of the present by engaging with the past. You will find out about the history of your community, Britain, and the rest of the world. You can develop a chronological overview that enables you to make connections within and across different periods and societies. You will start to appreciate why you are learning what you are learning and can debate its significance. History prepares you for the future, equipping you with knowledge and skills that are prized in adult life, enhancing employability and developing an ability to take part in a democratic society. It encourages mutual understanding of the historic origins of our ethnic and cultural diversity, and helps you become confident and questioning individuals.
Aspects of History are covered within the L4L curriculum.
Year 7 L4L Themes:
- Journey to the Centre of the Earth
- In Days of Old
- Journeys
- Off With Your Head
- Silent Movies
Aspects of History are covered within the L4L curriculum.
Year 8 L4L Themes:
- Pudding Lane
- Coming and Going
- India
- Freedom
- Please Sir
- Over the Top
Aspects of History are covered within the L4L curriculum.
Year 9 L4L Themes:
- Whose Earth is It Anyway?
- Tragedy
- Made in China
- America
- Britain
Year 10 and 11 from 2022: Edexcel GCSE History (9-1)
Edexcel GCSE and GCE 2014 (pearson.com)
Thematic study: Medicine through time c.1250- present with the British sector of the Western Front, 1914-1918: injuries, treatment, and the trenches
Studying Medicine in Britain will give students an overview of the impact that improved knowledge, understanding and technology has had in Britain from 1250 onwards. At its heart, the Medicine in Britain study is the story of change and continuity in medicine and the factors influencing its development. The study begins in the Middle Ages, with a focus on the importance of the Church in controlling medical training and providing care for the sick but also considering its reluctance to abandon faith in old methods for new, untested ideas, or its position of authority in the study of medicine. Following the decline of the power of the Church, the study moves through the Renaissance, the scientific revolution, the process of industrialisation and into the nineteenth century, when new discoveries and developments started to have a big impact on the understanding of disease. The focus moves to the rise of technology and the growing importance of government from the nineteenth century onwards. In the linked historic environment, students learn about the relationship between conditions on the Western Front and their impact on the nature of illness and the provision of medical care, within the broader context of developments in medicine in the early twentieth century.
Key individuals and events are studied as a way of examining change and continuity. For example, the work of William Harvey and Edward Jenner provided important advances in one way and yet could also be said to have had a limited impact on medicine overall. Similarly, comparisons can be made between epidemics such as the Black Death in 1348 and cholera in 1831.
British Depth Study: Early Elizabethan England 1558-1588
This topic touches on many areas of study with which students might be familiar, including the rise of the theatre, Mary, Queen of Scots, the Spanish Armada, and the seafaring adventures of Francis Drake. The interplay and links across the three key topics should ensure students gain an understanding of the complex forces which shaped Elizabethan society.
The three key topics provide a framework for teaching and understanding the option but should not be taken in isolation from each other. There is chronological overlap between the topics and this structure helps highlight the complexity and interplay of different aspects within society.
World Period Study: The American West c1835-1895
To aid this story of the American West, the unit has been divided into three sequential Key topics that help tell this fascinating and interesting story. Firstly, students look at the lives of the Plains Indians, early migration and settlement, and lawlessness in the early settlements, as well as the tensions between the settlers and Plains Indians. They then move on to how settlement on the Plains developed, ranching and the cattle industry, and the impact on the Plains Indians’ lives of events and developments between c1862 and c1876. Finally, students look at further changes in farming, the cattle industry and settlement, conflict and tension between different groups living on the Plains, and the destruction of the Plains Indians’ way of life. All three Key topics are interconnected, however, with threads of settlement, conflict and tensions, and the changing lives of the Plains Indians running throughout.
Modern Depth Study: Weimar and Nazi German, 1918-39
This modern depth study offers students a fascinating analysis of how, between the First and Second World Wars, a democratic Germany became a one-party dictatorship. Students will examine various political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of this change from a democratic to a one-party state. The specification content is divided into four Key topics which provide a framework for teaching and understanding this option. However, these are not in isolation from one another and there is some chronological overlap between the four Key topics, highlighting the complexity of Germany during the years 1918–39.
