History is interesting and exciting, providing opportunities to learn about people and events in many different ways. Lessons will build upon the skills developed during KS3, including communication, critical thinking, and individual research. You will develop your use of evidence, including written accounts, speeches, photographs, political cartoons and films, and we will evaluate different interpretations of historical people and events.
COURSE CONTENT
• Conflict and Tension (1918-39): The Origins of the Second World War.* This unit will include studying the Treaty of Versailles; the League of Nations; Hitler’s Foreign Policy; and Appeasement.
• The USA: Opportunity and Inequality (1920-1973), which will cover life during The ‘Roaring Twenties’; Prohibition and Gangsters; Flappers; Immigration; the Ku Klux Klan; the Great Depression and the New Deal; Recovery; the ‘American Dream’; McCarthy Witch Hunts; Rock ‘n’ Roll; Civil Rights
• Britain: Health and the People (c. 1000 AD to today), covering the legacy of the Ancient World; Medieval Medicine; the Black Death; ‘Quack’ methods of treatment, Vaccination, Germ Theory, a surgical revolution, Public Health during the Nineteenth Century, modern treatment, pharmaceuticals, Penicillin, the impact of the Second World War; National Health Service, 21st century Medicine.
• Elizabethan England (c. 1568-1603) within which you will study Elizabeth’s court; the marriage question; the ‘Golden Age’; the poor during the Elizabethan Age; English sailors, such as Hawkins, Drake, and Raleigh; the Religious Settlement; Mary, Queen of Scots; and the Spanish Armada. This will include learning about a Historical Environment, which in 2020 will be the English Channel.
• *This will be studied in year 9 during your History lessons.
ASSESSMENT
• Exam board: AQA
• For this GCSE, there are two examination units – each worth 50% of the final grade.
• Both exams are 2 hours long. They include source/interpretation questions, a range of low and high mark questions, and essay questions in each unit.
• Every student will sit the same examination paper.