History

Intent Statement

History at The Mandeville School aims to provide learners with essential knowledge and skills to navigate an increasingly changing world. For us here, history is all about being relevant to the lives of our learners and bringing the past to life. We study history chronologically to build on contextual knowledge over time and overlearn our seven key concepts to secure understanding. While most of our curriculum focuses on British history we also cover a breadth of topics and cultures including Germany, America and the Native Americans. We encourage and celebrate diversity by teaching the history of marginalised groups throughout our curriculum rather than as separate stand-alone topics. In a world where misinformation is able to spread rapidly, we feel it is our duty to give learners the tools to dissect and evaluate anything they encounter to come to their own informed judgements.

Links to the whole school curriculum

The History curriculum is aligned to the whole school Curriculum. The History curriculum is designed to establish a kind community where everyone perseveres, achieves and flourishes; where we enable all the experience life to the full. In the History department we maintain the Mandeville School Curriculum Principles:

A kind community through a curriculum that respects the diversity of our school, valuing our rich knowledge, history and experiences.

Perseverance and achievement through a curriculum that is well sequenced, developing understanding, building retention and leading to academic achievement. Firm foundations in a three-year Key Stage 3 provide grounding for success in Key Stage 4, Key Stage 5 and beyond.

Flourishing through a curriculum that nourishes personal development by giving students opportunities to explore their identity and grow their character. Students are equipped with knowledge of how to be healthy, sustain positive relationships and maintain wellbeing so as to have the information needed to be able to make an effective contribution to society.

Enabling students to experience life to the full through a curriculum that inspires and enriches them with meaningful knowledge and cultural capital. High aspirations mean students study a broad range of subjects in Key Stage 3 and have a variety of routes through Key Stage 4 and 5 which are challenging and aspirational.

In Key Stage Three we have 7 ‘big ideas’ (related to the national curriculum) which we study. These are…
1. Ideas of Change and Continuity
2. Ideas of Causation and Consequence
3. Establishing Similarities and Differences
4. Exploring Diversity
5. Using Evidence
6. Evaluating Interpretations
7. Understanding Significance

By the end of Key Stage 3 we will have met our curriculum intent through the 7 big ideas of Mandeville History so that students can know and understand:
1. Ideas of Change and Continuity
a. Understand how things such as technology, power and religion change over time. Additionally, that sometimes they do not.
b. Explain reasons behind these such concepts such as the actions of individuals, the role of governments and changing expectations.
c. Apply their contextual knowledge to assess these concepts.

2. Ideas of Causation and Consequence
a. Link together causes over a chronological period of time
b. Categorise these into short and long term
c. Evaluate these based in specific criteria.

3. Establishing Similarities and Differences
a. Use their contextual knowledge to draw out similarities and differences across time periods
b. Use these to track themes across periods e.g. attitudes to minorities
c. Denote how and why these occur in interpretations.

4. Exploring Diversity
a. Be able to identify and celebrate other cultures, realising what the study of this adds to our understanding of the world
b. Actively contribute to the curriculum by suggesting topics of study that reflect our own backgrounds
c. Understand the interconnectedness of minority histories as part of a continuous narrative.

5. Using Evidence
a. Students will be able to apply knowledge from evidence to answer a specific enquiry
b. Students will be able to analyse the provenance of a source to evaluate its accuracy, reliability and utility.

6. Evaluating Interpretations
a. Know how and why they can differ, suggesting reasons for this based on evidence and Own Knowledge
b. Be able to agree and disagree with interpretation based on reasoned judgements and therefore form their own
c. Understand contextual factors that lead to specific interpretations being formed.

7. Understanding Significance
a. Be able to judge/rank in order of significance based on given criteria
b. Understand what can make something significant and why that matters in the context of the period being evaluated
c. Link significance to wider world developments.