Read on Twitter
Here goes...
*draft KS3 curriculum*
N.B. Most of it is built on fab work in @histassoc's Teaching History - by too many brilliant people to name here.
Each enquiry is 3-6 lessons long (no lesson questions). I've also tried to have an 'overarching theme' for each year.
Y7 ~
*draft KS3 curriculum*
N.B. Most of it is built on fab work in @histassoc's Teaching History - by too many brilliant people to name here.
Each enquiry is 3-6 lessons long (no lesson questions). I've also tried to have an 'overarching theme' for each year.
Y7 ~
Y8 ~
Y9 ~
What I've tried to do is take the 'scholarship turn' that's so evident on Twitter and in Teaching History to its logical conclusion. I've used real historians' debates to think about what disciplinary knowledge I will teach. I've also tried to select *diverse* scholarship.
There are: cultural historians (because so much modern history writing is cultural); Marxist social and economic historians; Whigs; neo-narrativists; post-colonial historians; classicists; and a few TV historians. This means that pupils encounter diverse disciplinary methods.
The second-order concepts did feature in my thinking, but not beyond 'what is this question asking?' and 'is this a good question about change, causation etc?'. The substantive content - the actually issues the historians were debating - took priority over curricular proxies.
There are some shoddy omissions, no doubt (pre-colonial Africa isn't studied in its own right, but would feature in the 'Silk Roads' EQ). Y9 is also weaker (I know less C20th historiography). But by doing short enquiries - not one per half term - you can cover a lot of stuff.
I've thought a lot about 'who has agency' when planning this. There are very few 'classic' causation questions, because very few historians subscribe to E.H. Carr's models anymore. They are almost 60 years old, and were actually seen as very controversial in 1961!
Instead, I've tried to give agency to people, especially 'ordinary people'. A lot of the enquiries ask 'What did X mean to Y?'. That's deliberate. By asking children about the ideas of past actors, you force them to humanise these people. It shows pupils that they could think.
The exploration of 'meanings' is central to the cultural turn (stems from Geertz's work). @MonsieurBenger's forthcoming article on this in TH179 will, I'm sure, put this better than I possibly could.
Finally, I've tried to have EQs that deliberately recall stories from earlier ones. Examples:
Y7 - Renaissance re-heats knowledge of Greece and Rome.
Y8 - The word 'revolution' gains multiple, overlapping meanings.
Y9 - The last 'Silk Roads' enquiry ties the year together.
Y7 - Renaissance re-heats knowledge of Greece and Rome.
Y8 - The word 'revolution' gains multiple, overlapping meanings.
Y9 - The last 'Silk Roads' enquiry ties the year together.
So, this is what I've come up with so far. It's still a work in progress, because curriculum is never finished. I'm sharing all this to learn from other people, and to get more cultural history 'out there'.
Please let me know what you think, what I've missed and what looks OK.
Please let me know what you think, what I've missed and what looks OK.
