The History Department
Welcome to Presdales History department webpages. The History department is a team of expert historians with specialist interests in particular areas of History: Mrs Carr (Head of History), Miss Catterall, Ms Chandler, Mrs Inwood, Mr Spurgeon and Miss Workman
All members of the department teach across the key stages, and lend their particular expertise to the design and delivery of a curriculum spanning ancient, medieval, and modern periods of History, and covering local, British and wider world topics.
As a department we offer a range of extracurricular activities which further develop students’ interest in and enjoyment of the subject. Residential trips to the Battlefields of the First World War (Year 9), Berlin (Year 10) and, bi-annually, to Washington DC (6th form) are very popular, and support students’ engagement with the lived past. Visits from speakers, including academics from Cambridge University and a Holocaust Survivor, help to enrich students’ experience within school. Our team of 6th form History prefects support the learning of students in the lower school and at GCSE through lunchtime sessions offering a range of activities, from support with particular historical skills to showing historical films linked to the curriculum.
Our Vision
The History department aims to inspire all students with a fascination for the past. Through engaging students with the human experience of people in past times and cultures, we encourage students to develop a sense of their own identity and an ability to engage with issues from different perspectives.
Our Aim
We seek to create enquiring minds, equipped for the challenges of life in the 21st century. Students are taught to apply a process of historical enquiry and reasoning: forming hypotheses and analysing and evaluating evidence to reach and support independent conclusions. Learning in History focuses on establishing a secure foundation and framework of knowledge of the past and of history as a discipline. This includes how historians communicate their ideas and arguments, in spoken and written form. These skills are highly valued in all careers and walks of life, and thus our students are successful not only in examinations at school and in higher education, but also in the workplace.
Our Key Stage 3 curriculum is designed to inspire and enthuse students, and to develop their historical knowledge in overview and in depth. Over the course of the key stage, we trace five big stories:
1. The economy, living standards and technology: what were people’s lives like?
2. Power and government: who had power and how did they govern?
3. Protest and rights: who tried to change things and how successful were they?
4. Religion, identity, society and culture: how did beliefs and ideas shape people’s lives and relationships?
5. Empire, war and international relations especially Britain’s relationship to other countries and peoples: where did Britain stand in relation to other countries?
This supports students in developing overall frameworks of historical understanding. A range of topics from different times periods and places are selected to provide in-depth studies that illuminate the overview.
Through these big stories about political, social, economic and cultural history, students are taught to recognise and use substantive concepts. They answer questions about cause and consequence, change and continuity, similarity and difference, using evidence to inform and substantiate historical claims. They discuss historical significance, unpick popular and scholarly interpretations and write narrative and argumentative history.
Resources supporting the History curriculum in Key Stage 3 can be found on, or are linked from, the History department site, accessible to students via a tile on RMUnify.
Year 7: How was Britain connected to the rest of the world before 1492?
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Year 8: How did revolutions transform Britain and the world between 1492 and c.1900?
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Year 9: For what should the twentieth century be remembered?
A highlight of year 9 is the residential trip to the First World War battlefields around Ypres in Belgium and on the Somme in France. Students trace the names of individuals from the local area and their own families on memorials in these areas. They deepen their understanding of the human and strategic dimensions of the conflict through visits to museums, trench reconstructions, and cemeteries including a tour of the Newfoundland Memorial Park at Beaumont Hamel, site of the disastrous first day of the Battle of the Somme. This visit also complements a study unit on injuries and medical treatments on the Western Front in the First World War, which is part of the GCSE course.
Year 7
Year 7 researched the campaigns for the extension of suffrage, from the events of ‘Peterloo’ in 1819 to the Representation of the People Act, 1928. They produced a virtual museum to inform and educate their visitors about these campaigns and the role of key events and individuals. The projects showcased here are a small selection of the superb work we have received. Congratulations to all the girls on their hard work!
Year 8
Year 8 researched the First World War, with a focus on the global and local dimensions of the war and challenging common myths and stereotypes. They produced a virtual museum to inform visitors about the war, including less well-known or frequently misunderstood aspects of the conflict. The projects showcased here are a small selection of the superb work we have received. Congratulations to all the girls on their hard work!
