History

It was once said by a leading academic that ‘the true test of a scholar is their History paper’. Whether this is the case or not, certainly here at Cottesmore, History is a subject held in high regard.

The focus is at all times to make the study of History ‘fun’ whilst at the same time helping all the children gain an understanding and awareness of their heritage and how this affects their future. At Cottesmore the children study many different periods of History from the Romans through the Middle Ages, the Tudors and Stuarts right up to 1900. Many different resources are used including fieldwork trips to local places of interest e.g. Hastings, the use of ICT and plenty of audio visual material to stimulate the children’s interest. We also enter pupils annually for the Townsend Warner History prize.

In the History Department we aim to:

• Fulfil the requirements of the Common Entrance and Public School Scholarship examinations
• Enable children to understand how the past was different from the present and how people of other times and places may have had different values and attitudes from our own
• Provide a positive introduction to the nature and skills  of History as a subject, to develop a real interest in the past, to promote positive attitudes to History and to present History as a valuable subject in its own right
• Give children a sense of their own identity and to understand how events and issues in History have influenced and shaped the world we live in today
• Help children gain a level of Historical understanding appropriate to their age
• Allow the school curriculum to assist and prepare children for living and working in the contemporary world
• Contribute to personal and social education by developing attitudes and values such as tolerance of other races and opinions
• Provide a History curriculum which is broad, balanced, relevant and interesting
• Develop an awareness of Historical evidence at different periods in time
• Understand that evidence of the past may be interpreted in different ways
• Develop a sense of time and chronology
• Develop an empathy for the past
• Encourage children to ask questions e.g. Why did this happen? Why did that happen? And what evidence do we have to prove this?
• Gain an understanding of our Heritage and how this affects our future