This document discusses enquiry-based planning for curriculum content. It recommends framing learning around key enquiries rather than individual lessons to allow for revisiting topics. Example enquiry questions are provided for historical concepts like cause and consequence, similarity and diversity, interpretations, and evidence. Teachers are encouraged to break up curriculum content into conceptually-driven enquiries and make them relevant for their students. Some additional example enquiry questions are given covering different time periods in history.

1. Enquiry based planning
How can you make sense of the vast
amount of content you need to cover?

2. Why a focus on enquiries?
• The wording of an enquiry frames the learning for
a number of lessons – moving away from the
‘tyranny of the lesson’
• The strongest are those based on a clear second
order concept
• This is NOT about ‘skills’ but about knitting
together learning
• Allows for constant revisiting of knowledge and
addition of new knowledge – this means more
demanding content can be absorbed

3. How would you formulate an enquiry
question for each of these concepts
using the content proposed?
• Cause and Consequence
• Similarity and Diversity
• Change and Continuity
• Historical Significance
• Evidence
• Interpretations

4. Do some planning for a year group
• Worksheet – how might you begin to break up
this curriculum?
• Make it relevant to your students?
• Continue to focus on conceptually driven
enquiries?
– Cause and Consequence, Similarity and Diversity,
Change and Continuity, Historical Significance,
Evidence, Interpretations

5. Some ideas to play with...
• ‘Why do opinions of Victoria’s Empire keep changing?’ -
Interpretations
• ‘Who wanted to make Victorian children go to school?’ – Similarity
and Difference
• ‘Why is it hard to decide whether Edwardian Britain was a Golden
Age?’ -Evidence
• ‘Who fought on the Western Front?’ - Similarity and Difference
• Why do we still remember the Peace talks of 1919? - Significance
• ‘What generalisations about the Holocaust can we make?’-
Similarity and Difference
• ‘What kind of change did fighting a Cold War bring?’ – Change and
Continuty

6. Interpretations
• Should we be proud of the British Empire?
• Why do opinions of Victoria’s Empire keep
changing?

7. Similarity and Difference
• Who fought on the Western Front?
• How different were the attitudes of the rulers
and the ruled in the British Empire?

8. Causes and Consequences
• Why was universal suffrage introduced?
• Why did Britain’s role in the world change
after the Second World War?

9. Change and Continuity
• Which reform has done the most to change
life in Britain in the 20th century?
• How close was Britain to revolution between
1789 and 1832?

10. Significance
• Why do we still remember the Peace talks of
1919?
• How should Winston Churchill be
remembered?

11. Evidence
• Why is it hard to decide whether Edwardian
Britain was a Golden Age?
• What can the Great Exhibition of 1851 tell us
about Victorian Britain?