Exam Board: Edexcel, Option B; SHP (Schools History Project), Modular GCSE.
There are four key areas to the course, these are
- Medicine: A development study of the changes and continuity from prehistoric times to the modern day of the treatments and understanding of disease and infection.
- Surgery Sourcework: A detailed Unit worth 25% examining sources on Surgery through time. This is a neat link to the Medicine development study.
- American West 1840-95: This depth study requires a new set of skills to examine, assess and evaluate the events and personalities of the American West.
- Controlled Assessment: This complex piece of written work is worth a quarter of the GCSE and is on Weimar and Nazi Germany. It consists of a research enquiry and two questions on representations of the period. The first exam is at the end of the first term of Y10, students sit the American West paper in January of the course. The following January they then sit the Medicine paper, finally completing their studies in Summer of Y11 by submitting their Controlled Assessment and sitting the Surgery paper.
Trips
We have at least two trips as an integral part of the GCSE History course. These are opportunities to enlarge the knowledge and understanding of the key topics and questions we study in class. It also presents pupils with the ability to approach the topic in their own way, and access the information in the best way for that individual. The first visit is to Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds which is an excellent resource. It presents a variety of situations and charts the medical advances in terms of how people on the (rancid, open-sewer, diseased) street would have seen them. Thackray largely concentrates on the Modern aspect, giving pupils a chance to experience 1840s Leeds and the Public Health problems of the time. It also looks at the training of medical professionals and surgical advances. The Trip acts as revision for topics studied, in addition to adding new and real dimensions to pupils learning. The second visit is hopefully going to be to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, but this is NOT confirmed.
MEDICINE
The Three chronological time periods studied are
- Medieval
- Renaissance
- Modern
Five key questions which will be analysed throughout each module are:
- What caused people to be healthy or unhealthy?
- What ideas did people have about the causes and treatment of illness and injury?
- Who provided medical care?
- What caused diagnoses and treatments to remain the same of to change?
- How far did new ideas and treatments affect the majority of the population?
The role of these agents of change will be examined.
- Special People
- Government
- Special People
- Chance
- War
- Science and Technology
- Religion
- Communication
Controlled Assessment
This piece of extended writing examines a large and complicated period in modern German history from the end of the First World War and Germany’s defeat and decline, then the resurgence under the Weimar Government and its demise and Hitler’s rise to power as leader in 1933. The period concludes at the outbreak of World War Two in 1939.
Surgery
The sourcework Unit allows students to be tested on an area of strength by being able to demonstrate their abilities to analyse and interpret primary and secondary sources on a familiar topic of Surgery.
American West
This Unit is a depth study which is taught with a focus on the growth and development of the movement of settlers westwards, this is prefaced by an investigation into the life and environment of the Great Plains Indians. The different groups who moved West such as the Mormons, Homesteaders and cowboys form the next part of the study. The American West unit allows for the further development of source skills and powers of analysis.