Cranford Review 2021

# HISTORY
History Curriculum
History
is a part of our fabric as a society – the past is all around us, embedded in every nook
and cranny of our local area and is deeply rooted in our cultural backgrounds and
experiences. For this reason, the History department’s curriculum at Cranford
Community College is not only full of depth and variety, but it is also
all encompassing. Our students are taught to explore their local History
and consider how it was impacted by global events such as World War I.
They are also equally taught to question the exchange in power between
individuals who governed the state and the people who worked the land.
With all of its beauty and variety, History is something to be experienced
and not just read. This became even more evident to the History Department
when remote teaching and learning as a result of the pandemic lockdowns.
We very quickly adapted our curriculum to ensure that students were able
to experience History and still gain the benefits of a broad curriculum
through the use of documentary clips and videos, engaging with recorded
eye witness accounts and testimonies of the Holocaust. Our students were
also directed to involve their family in their learning by enquiring about
their migration stories and experiences of living in the local area during the
British Civil Rights
movement. Where students were exploring life in Tudor England, they were given a Tudor biscuit recipe to
try! The results were interesting to say the least! Our KS4 students in year 9 and 11 were exposed to current
medical developments and asked to produce time capsule pieces of their own – they all were, of course, living
through a historical event itself. Despite these adaptations, the department endeavoured to ensure that students
developed their historical skills – critiquing source materials, understanding how to write historical narratives
as well as apply second order historical concepts such as significance.
Whilst we adapted our curriculum activities to become more explorative for
students, we wanted to retain the feel of historical narratives and studentteacher
engagement. Therefore, the History Department was very quick to try
out new remote teaching and learning apps and platforms – two of which was
Kahoot and Nearpod. The quiz activities here were thoroughly enjoyable and
a clear indicator of how competitive our students really are! To be able to
track our students’ work, the History Department also implemented the use
of OneNote – an online notebook linked to MS Teams. This was a fantastic
live way of monitoring student work and providing feedback in real time,
almost replicating entirely for staff and students the experience of being
in a real classroom.
Our students at Cranford Community College have experienced History
in its purest form by living through global events that we often only read
about in textbooks. They have been fantastic at adapting to the changes that have
taken place and out of it all, they have learnt so much which will only serve them well in their future
endeavours.
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Sahrish Shaikh (Head of History Department)