History

Curriculum Intent

At the Nottingham Academy we aim to provide high-quality history education, which helps pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Our curriculum is designed to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. It teaches them to understand important historical concepts such as cause and consequence, similarity, and difference, change and continuity, and significance, to arrive at their own substantiated judgements about the past. Studying history at the Nottingham Academy enables pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

Our enquiries are organised around substantive concepts (such as empire, revolution) and second order concepts (such as cause, consequence). The sequence of our enquiries is chronological. The enquiries themselves will use a narrative to help pupils make sense of the substantive concepts on which they focus. Within each enquiry, pupils will encounter substantive concepts which will be illustrated through concrete examples. Each enquiry is designed to be an ‘emergent puzzle’ and each lesson promotes pupil thought about this emergent puzzle. We achieve this by blending secure substantive knowledge with rich disciplinary knowledge to refine pupils’ appreciation and practice of historical argument.

We want Nottingham Academy’s history lessons to support all children. Our lessons are pitched so that all pupils can experience an early sense of success. Our enquiries are intended to build pupil knowledge gradually. Focusing each lesson sequence on a clear enquiry question provides scope for building to a substantial final piece of work. Our resources are designed to minimise potential barriers to comprehension. Where possible, activities will be adapted using scaffolds and models to help pupils develop an understanding of good historical writing.

Students improve at history by building up knowledge of the past which is increasingly complex and secure. As they study periods, events and people, they develop a rich understanding of these past places and times. Through studying these topics, students also build their chronological knowledge, developing secure chronological frameworks, a sense of period and a coherent narrative of broad developments over time. Through repeated encounters in different historical contexts students also develop their knowledge of important substantive concepts such as empire, trade, tax and rebellion. These layers of knowledge, built over multiple enquiries, give students the foundation to learn new, and increasingly complex information in history, and our curriculum is designed to build this knowledge effectively and secure it in memory. With secure knowledge of the past, students are also able to learn about the discipline of history.

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