History
Our History department is located in the main school building with three teaching rooms. We currently benefit from the enthusiasm and experience of 4 teachers. The team’s dedication to providing stimulating lessons continues to be rewarded with large numbers of students opting to take History at GCSE and A Level with good results.
The courses we offer aim to stimulate interest and enthusiasm for the study of the past, and develop an understanding of the historical concepts, processes and periods studied.
The department is well resourced with regularly updated schemes of work, accompanied by Power Points and worksheets, as well as a range of textbooks and DVDs. The History curriculum is enriched with visits to the Black Country Museum, the Imperial War Museum and the FWW Battlefields.
In years 7 and 8 students receive 5 lessons per fortnight, usually with a single teacher. There are four or five topics a year with each topic lasting about 10 weeks and a test takes place at the end of each unit. Homework includes spelling tests, research activities and model making.
The topics students learn about in year 7 are:
The topics students learn about in year 8 are:
Parental advice - Encourage students to produce mind-maps or flash cards and help them to develop the skills to learn independently.
In years 9, 10 and 11 students receive 5 lessons per fortnight. Students study the Edexcel syllabus and the 3 examined units cover a wide variety of historical eras, time periods and geographical contexts. Students will study parts of each topic in each year of the GCSE course. This enables our students to ‘taste’ all the topics annually and allows them to revisit, review and build on their knowledge in stages.
The topics students learn about over the course of their GCSE studies are:
Parental advice - Students need to apply the knowledge they learn to new situations. The main reasons for students struggling are related to not remembering key ideas or terms or failing to include enough detail in answers. Ensure your child learns the key facts as they go through topics and get them into the habit of producing revision resources such as mindmaps and flash cards as they go along. Try to test them on these so you can see how much they remember. To help you the school provides subject guides with key facts, common questions and checklists. Get your child to show you and ask them questions from it. More extensive revision guides are available to buy. The students also have access to Google classroom and GCSE pod.