The History curriculum will ensure that pupils at Whitelands academy will develop into a global citizen. Students will have a greater understanding of how politics, religion and economics interconnect to build the world around us. History will create children who are responsible citizens, as they will be able to appreciate the complex and debatable ideas. Students will be able to articulate ideas respectfully and be inclusive and tolerant of other points of view. The curriculum will develop deep analytical skills in students who attend Whitelands Academy allowing them to interact with a range of different topics and resources.
Our curriculum is academic and ambitious:
We are using information from feeder primary schools to help make curriculum-based decisions on topics to ensure a smooth transition from primary to secondary school. This KS3 curriculum is relevant, modern, holistic and challenging. This will provide a great platform to ensure student’s transition smoothly from KS3 to GCSE.
Further rationale behind our curriculum design includes a variety of different topics so that students get a chance to find something that they like within the curriculum delivery. Further to this, pupils will utilise a range of Historical skills sequenced so that when they are revisited, key skills will be built upon. We have the same ambitious expectations for all of our students. We therefore teach to the highest attaining child and scaffold to support all students reaching the same learning objectives using strategies such as the SEN 6.
Our curriculum is broad and enriching:
History is taught to all students for three years at KS3. This is so that we can provide students with as many different elements of important History as possible before the curriculum naturally narrows slightly at GCSE. At Whitelands Academy we extend past the National Curriculum by ensuring our curriculum looks beyond the traditional approach to history. We ensure that our curriculum is as representative of our pupils as it can be by studying topics such as the Islamic perspective of the Crusades and the British and American Civil Rights Movements.
Students will have opportunities to attend many different trips throughout the History curriculum to enrich and further embed the curriculum. These are inclusive of travelling to Oxford to understand the role of Oxford during the English Civil War, Bletchley Park to deepen their understanding of how codebreaking was integral to World War 2. At GCSE students will be able to visit the World War 1 battlefields and Auschwitz concentration camp to deepen their understanding of the curriculum.
Our curriculum promotes core literacy:
History has many cross curricular links in terms of developing literacy skills. Pupils use many skills that crossover from English. When doing source analysis and interpretations pupils often need to utilise inference skills. Pupils also need to develop their persuasive writing in order to effectively develop their arguments.
Throughout the KS3 curriculum, pupils will utilise a lot of tier 3 vocabulary specific to history. This is inherent both in topic-based vocabulary e.g., Fyrd and Motte in Norman Britain. Pupils are expected to be able to utilise the correct time period terminology throughout their work in history. Further to this, this tier 3 vocabulary is expected to be understood and utilised in pieces of extended writing (which are usually based around GCSE skills). This will develop high levels of literacy throughout the history curriculum.
Our curriculum is values-based:
Students learn about how religious, political and social issues have shaped the world around them. Pupils will learn that contemporary issues have their basis in the past and that some of these issues have their roots hundreds of years in the past. Students will learn about how different topics and factors can interconnect to build up a picture of the past. History has the capability of building incredibly strong cultural capital throughout the curriculum.
Our curriculum promotes foundational knowledge
as a knowledge-rich curriculum we believe that knowledge underpins and enables the application of skills; both are entwined. We support students in being able to retain and retrieve what they have it learnt in lessons so that we can build on his deepen their understanding in future lessons. As a department we define the powerful knowledge our students need and help them recall it by using knowledge organisers. We use regular assessments for learning, particularly using spaced and interleaved DNAs, diagnostic quizzes and plenty of tasks. Staff set their own time a side for a regular planned revision lesson to help the students organise and learn their curriculum content.