Saint John's

Saint John's International School Bangkok, Thailand

History at St John’s

The chief aim of the History department is to give students an opportunity to engage in a broad range of the key events that have shaped their world in an interesting, fun and relevant way. With this aim in mind emphasis is put on teaching through a range of activities to ensure all students feel History is a subject that affects them.

We encourage role play, group work, presentations, debate, individual research, and use of ICT. Emphasis is put on development of skills of analysis and interpretation, with many sources such as cartoons, photographs and film used to ensure all students are able to grasp the complexities of topics.

Now and Pro splitting the world between 2 superpowers

Resources
History is taught in a specialist classroom that houses a large number of general resource textbooks and worksheets for each Key Stage. There is also a wide range of historical literature and visual resources in the school’s library.

English as an Additional Language (EAL) and History

In Key Stage 3 the department is supported by EAL specialist teachers who teach a parallel program (in years 7 & 8) to students who require more assistance with the content specific language. This develops students’ language skills to prepare them for mainstream history lessons in Year 9. In Year 9 these students enjoy team teaching from the History and EAL specialists. In this way all students are fully prepared to cope with the language skills required to study History at IGCSE level. We work successfully as a team and also work exceptionally hard at maintaining high standards in teaching & learning. We are enthusiastic about our subject, open to innovation and ambitious in our goals for the success of our learners.

The areas covered by History at St John’s

The teaching of history at Saint John’s International School is based on the English National Curriculum at key stage 3, the Edexcel IGCSE course at key stage 4, and the Edexcel syllabus at AS and A2. We study the history of several countries with a particular focus on Britain, the USA and China.

Field trips
The History department currently runs a number of trips, including the year 7 barge trip in conjunction with the Geography department and a planned trip to the Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam for year 9.