Curricula – History

Vision

The Radclyffe School history department vision is that students become well-rounded historians, who can use a wide-ranging, word rich vocabulary, as well as become competent in historical second order concepts (Disciplinary knowledge). Furthermore, students receive a well-rounded curriculum, covering a range of historical time periods. The Radclyffe History Department strive to create independent and thoughtful thinkers who can contextualise significant events in history and relate this to their own experience.

Year 7 Curriculum Intent

By the end of year 7 students are able to apply key history skills such as cause and consequence, significance and change and continuity to content that they have studied. They will also have a chronological understanding of Britain from AD43 through to 1714. Students will have also studied earlier time periods, including the pre-historic period through the use of key history skills.

Students need to know about the importance of power, monarchy and religion played in society. This theme runs throughout the year 7 curriculum.

Year 7 Topics

• The Silk Roads
• The Norman Conquest
• Medieval England
• Tudor England
• Stuart England

Year 8 Curriculum Intent

By the end of Year 8 students are able to confidently explain key causes and consequences and develop ideas on why events are significant. This will expand on year 7 and students will be able to discuss long and short-term consequences as well as the extent of the significance.

The intent for the year 8 curriculum is for students to understand how the 5 key units interconnect. For example, students should know that the Industrial Revolution was possible because of the expansion of the British Empire and that the British Empire expanded in order to fulfil the desire to make Britain a powerful industrial nation. The same concept applies to the notion of Empires being built by powerful nations to fuel exploration and the need for raw materials led to conflict in Europe in 1914.

Year 8 Topics

• The Slave Trade
• The British Raj
• The Industrial Revelution
• World War One
• Women’s Suffrage

Year 9 Curriculum Intent

By the end of Year 9 students are able to confidently apply a range of historical second order concepts. Furthermore, students will have a clear understanding of how the world has developed during the course of the 20^th century. Students will be able to use and compare different interpretations of events, as well as use historical sources to support their ideas.

Year 9 Topics

• World War Two
• The Holocaust
• Civil Rights
• 1945-2000: A Post War World, The Cold War
• 1945-2000: Vietnam, conflict in the Far East

Year 10 Curriculum Intent

By the end of 10 students are able to demonstrate change and continuity between different time periods and show how and why medicine progressed or regressed, and at what speed. Students will be able to apply knowledge from papers 1 and 2, through detailed explanation and analysis.

Year 10 Topics

• Paper 1: Medicine through time c1250-present day and Western Front
• Paper 2 Section A: Early Elizabethan England 1558-1588
• Paper 2 Section A: American West

Year 11 Curriculum Intent

By the end of Year 11 students are able to analyse sources using both their provenance and content and compare different interpretations of events. Students will also be able to match interpretations to historical sources and explain why they link together.

Year 11 Topics

• Paper 2 Section A: American West
• Paper 3: Weimar and Nazi Germany, 1918–39