Curriculum
History

The intent of the History curriculum at St Luke’s C of E School is to enable students to grow into young people who are informed, inquisitive and inspired to make a difference to the world around them.   Our curriculum is underpinned by the research that has informed our whole-school curriculum design, but in addition our teaching is influenced by the research of Christine Counsell on concepts such as the development of knowledge, sequencing and significance, as well as various articles in Teaching History, published by the Historical Association; the work of Barak Rosenshine and ‘Teach Like a Champion’ by Doug Lemov.

Our curriculum enables our students to live life to the full by:

• Developing an investigative character: this includes being able to form enquiries, make use of evidence, analyse sources and recognise why different opinions exist, not taking statements at face value but taking responsibility to search for the truth.
• Being inspired by people and events in the past to take responsibility through standing up against injustice, protest about issues they care about, participate in democratic processes and movements and in doing so give hope to others.
• Understanding, accepting and showing respect to people and cultures who are different to themselves, and in doing so being inclusive people.
• Understanding why people have different opinions to themselves. Engaging in respectful dialogue and debate with others, so that others feel included and to understand there is often a need to compromise.
• Developing an ability to articulate ideas confidently and clearly, support statements with evidence and make links and connections and form a persuasive argument.
• Developing strong literacy skills so that they can achieve their best now and in the future.
• Understanding and being able to explain why significant events happened, and how today’s world is shaped by past events.
• Using knowledge about the past to articulate informed opinions about current events and issues, and make wise and responsible decisions in the future.
• Growing in humility due to an awareness that nobody’s influence lasts forever and an understanding of our ‘smallness’ in the scale of history. Such an attitude results in respect for others and the planet. At the same time, growing in appreciation of and respecting the value of all human life and our potential to do good, which gives great hope.
• Engaging with big questions that exist for humans.
• Gaining knowledge, skills and qualifications that open opportunities in their future and enable students to achieve their best. This includes working hard and being able to organise their work and time.

We meet the needs of all students, including those with SEND and those who are disadvantaged by:

• Improving all students’ sense of chronology through the use of timelines. All students have a timeline with key dates in the back of their exercise book.
• Using writing frames and sentence starters to support students to develop academic writing skills.
• Focusing on oracy, in particular through turn and talk and sentence starters, in order to develop students’ literacy.
• Ensuring design of slides avoids cognitive overload.
• Regular modelling of quality work, in particular high quality, academic writing.
• Analysing academic writing, for example through the use of visualisers
• Ensuring that the past is looked at from a variety of perspectives and considers the experiences of different genders, classes, races and sexualities.
• Regularly referencing tier 2 vocabulary and grammatical features, in particular conjunctive adverbials (ensuring students ask themselves ‘so what?’ when explaining).
• Chunking task instructions and checking understanding.
• Regularly reviewing sets and groupings.
• Using dual coding and images to engage students and help them retain information.
• Framing communication positively and proactively encouraging students through praise, communication with parents and support to build confidence.