The History department aims to build on the interest of students in the past, as well as develop their skills in understanding events and human motivation.
The challenges in meeting the needs of students with a vision impairment include:
- The visual nature of some topics, including the propensity of assessment organisations to use pictorial sources on examination papers
- Accessing the necessary large amounts of text when carrying out research
- Grasping chronology without some of the visual ‘pegs’ which act as clues for fully sighted people
- Lack of the incidental learning which is acquired through sight
Examples of adaptations for vision impaired students
- Year 7 students go on regular Humanities trips to a range of local sites, including surrounding castles, Worcester Cathedral and Pershore Abbey, as well as nearby museums.
- Older students visit a range of sites and in the last few years have had the opportunity of going to Poland, Berlin and Amsterdam, which included a visit to the Anne Frank and Resistance museums.
- Structured work on developing research skills, through the use of resource banks of large print, Braille and electronic materials.
- Drama activities which aim to develop understanding of the visual imagery of sources.
- Use of kinaesthetic learning methods to develop students’ understanding of chronology.
- Using the importance of the College in the history of the education of the vision impaired to develop awareness of the range of artefacts and sources which can help a historian to understand the past; including a KS3 unit on Blind people through History.
To read about the History Curriculum intent, please click the button below:
Photo credits: The National Archive
Courses
A Level:
AQA History; the Tudors, Russia, Revolution and Dictatorship and an NEA on an aspect of 17th century History
GCSE:
Eduqas: Crime and Punishment; Germany 1918-39; USA 1929-90; Elizabethan England
Head of Department:
