HISTORY - What You Will Learn

Key Stage 4

At Key Stage 4 History is not statutory and students can choose to study it at examination level. This page contains information about the course.

Number of lessons per week: 2 lessons (2 hours)

Qualification: General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE)

Examining board: AQA

Further information and full course specification: AQA website

Scheme of work

Medicine Through Time

This section emphasises changing ideas and practices in the cause, prevention and cure of disease and infection, with changes in the understanding and practices of anatomy and surgery.

Medicine in the Ancient World c10 000BC . c500 AD

Key features of the societies studied:

• Prehistoric societies: role of magic, surgery; parallels with traditional aboriginal societies. 
• Ancient Egypt: supernatural and natural approaches to medicine.
• Ancient Greece: the importance of healthy living, the cult of Asklepios, development of the Theory of the Four Humours, Alexandria.
• Ancient Rome: the development of public health, the influence of Greek medicine, medicine in the army. 
• Key individuals: Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen.

Medieval and Renaissance Medicine c500 . c1700

Key features of the societies studied:

• Impact of the fall of the Roman Empire on medicine.
• Nature and importance of Islamic medicine.
• Impact of superstition and Christianity on Medieval medicine.
• The challenging of medical authority: improved knowledge of anatomy.
• Continuing traditional methods: bleeding, wise women, response to plagues.
• Key individuals: Rhazes, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Paracelsus, Vesalius, Paré, Harvey.

Medicine in the Industrial and Modern World c1700-Present Day

Key features of the societies studied:

• Disease
  • Vaccination; the Germ Theory and its impact on the treatment of diseases: magic bullets; penicillin.
  • Role of the World Health Organisation in fighting disease and ill-health.
  • Modern issues in medicine: AIDS, drugs revolution, problem drugs, alternative medicines, superbugs, genetic engineering.
• Surgery
  • Developments in anaesthetics, antiseptics, aseptic surgery.
  • Establishment of a nursing profession and women doctors.
  • Impact of two World Wars on surgery: plastic surgery, blood transfusions.
  • Impact of technology: X-rays, transplant surgery, radiation therapy, keyhole surgery.
• Key individuals: Jenner, Simpson, Nightingale, Pasteur, Koch, Blackwell, Garrett Anderson, Halsted, Ehrlich, Fleming, Florey and Chain, McIndoe, Franklin, Wilkins, Watson and Crick, Barnard.

Public Health

Public Health in pre-industrial Britain, pre c1750

• Public health facilities in the Roman period.
• Public health in the Middle Ages: attempts to improve and reasons for lack of development.
• Public health problems, plagues and their treatment in the later Middle Ages and seventeenth century, particularly the Black Death and Great Plague in London.

Public Health in Industrial Britain, c1750-c1900

• Problems of public health in urban and industrial areas after c1750.
• Nature and impact of epidemics, e.g. cholera, and attempts to deal with them.
• Changing local and national government involvement in public health; measures, causes and consequences, including 1848 and 1875 Public Health Acts.
• Key individuals: Chadwick, Snow, Octavia Hill.

Public Health since c1900

• The nature of poverty c1900.
• Liberal Social Reforms; measures, causes and consequences.
• Public health problems between the wars; social conditions, poverty and housing; attempted solutions.
• National Health Service: measures, causes and consequences.
• Key individuals: Booth, Rowntree, Lloyd George, Beveridge, Bevan.

The American West 1840-1895

The Great Plains and the Plains Indians

• Who were the Plains Indians?
• The geography of North America.
• The nature of the Plains.
• The coming of the Plains Indians; the different tribes; their movement and settlement.
• The beliefs and way of life of the Plains Indians both men and women.

Early Settlers  Why did the early settlers move west?

• Mountain men, early migrants and miners.
• The Mormons: their beliefs and early history; their leadership, the move to, and successful settlement at, Salt Lake City.
• Attitudes to the Great American desert.
• The origins of, and early settlers. belief in, their .Manifest Destiny.

Cattlemen and Cowboys

• How was cattle ranching affected by the railways?
• Texas and early cattle ranching.
• The cattle kingdoms.
• The effects of the Civil War.
• The reasons for the Long Drive.
• The coming of the railways.
• The effects and importance of the railways.
• Cattle trails and cattle towns as pioneered by men like Charles Goodnight, Oliver Loving and Joseph McCoy.
• Ranching on the Great Plains as pioneered by men like John Iliff.
• Cowboys: who they were and the myth and reality of their lives and work.
• The end of the open range.

Farming on the Great Plains

• Why were farmers able to settle on the Great Plains?
• Reasons for going West.
• The journeys, life and work of the homesteaders. 
• Federal and state government actions; legislation, grants of land and money.
• The reasons for, and results of, The Homestead Act, 1862 and Timber and Culture Act 1873.
• Railway companies.
• Contribution to the settlement of the West.
• Farming problems and solutions.
• Women on the Great Plains: the hardships they faced; their stabilising and civilising effect on society.

Law and Order - Why was law and order a problem on the Great Plains?

The structure and theory of government: federal, territory and state

governments, counties and towns.  The problems of government in practice. 

Law and order in the mining regions, the cow towns, rustling and territorial

rivalry.  Causes of disorder.  The Range Wars. How successfully was the problem of law and order dealt with? Solutions to problems of disorder: sheriffs and marshals; miners. courts, vigilantes.  Johnson County War.

Struggle for the Great Plains

• How did the arrival of white people on the Great Plains affect the Indians. way of life?
• The problem of the Plains Indians; first policies - the permanent Indian frontier.
• Settlers move West; changes in policy towards the Plains Indians; treaties and small reservations.
• The Plains Wars and increasing conflict leading to the Sand Creek Massacre, 1864.
• How successfully was the Indian problem resolved?
• The Indian wars after 1865.
• Military leaders: General Philip Sheridan, William Sherman, Lieutenant-Colonel Custer and the final conflict with the Plains Indians.
• The Battle of the Little Big Horn.
• The Dawes Act, 1887.
• The Battle of Wounded Knee, 1890.
• The close of the frontier in 1895 and its impact on native Americans.
• The end of the Plains Indians.

Modern World Study

Ireland

The pupils study Irish History from the 12th Century until the late 20th century.

Pupils complete two pieces of coursework.

These are centred around the outbreak of violence in the late 1960's and the introduction of troops from Britain to maintain law and order and the interpretations of Bloody Sunday.

History Around Us

Castles

Pupils study different aspects of Castles from the late 11th century until there demise in the 17th Century.

Pupils complete two pieces of coursework.

The first is in relation to their fieldstudy of Warkworth castle and the other is a source based exercise.

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