History
Our history curriculum helps to explain the world as it is by exploring the world as it was, in an intriguing and ambitious way. Understanding is developed around a ‘spine’ of British History, but enquiries explore global, continental or local stories, emphasising the complexity of the past and the constructed, contested nature of History. To this end, pupils develop their disciplinary thinking, exploring the past from multiple perspectives and viewpoints. We strive to make our curriculum representative of the past’s inhabitants, aiming to understand the broadest possible picture and the details that illuminate it. These threads are combined and sequenced to craft a rich, broad and structured understanding of the past for every pupil.
Perhaps most importantly our curriculum aims to produce ‘citizen historians’ by helping change how our pupils understand themselves, the world around them and their own place within it.
Increasing pupils’ historical knowledge, curiosity, critical thinking skills and communication skills are all key functions of our curriculum. Increased knowledge of the past helps inform the identity of our pupils; this curriculum will give them both confidence to build strong arguments of their own and flexibility to incorporate new perspectives into their thinking. The Long Stratton History curriculum will help pupils question and influence the people and communities around them.
We aim to enrich the curriculum by giving our pupils additional experiences beyond the classroom. This includes an opportunity to hear the personal testimony of a survivor of the Holocaust through the work of the Holocaust Education Trust. We also visit local places of interest such as Norwich Castle and run residential trips further afield such as our annual GCSE trip to Berlin.
Our history curriculum exists, within the wider Long Stratton curriculum, to change the pupil and to give the pupil new power. We want to help all of our pupils to be able to clamber into the discourse and practices of educated people, so that they gain the powers of the powerful.