Year 9 make connections across the twentieth century by shaping big narratives

Oliver Scott explains how he fused two goals: planning a new Year 9 history curriculum and finding a way to help Year 9 connect it all together. Inspired by the distinctive style of E.H. Gombrich, Scott decided to have his pupils write a grand narrative at mid- and end-year points. The narrative would pull together the twentieth-century topics, showing their connections across time and space. As he built the curriculum, Scott built in ‘story so far’ lessons where pupils could reflect on the relationship between topics. His journey allowed him also to reflect on the function of narrative within knowledge-rich teaching. Once the natural retrieval of narrative is harnessed, retrieval becomes authentic rather than artificial and forced...