KS3 & KS4 history curriculum

This unit uses and builds on the previous unit, where pupils' knowledge of economic recovery in late 1930s and early 1940s America is important to contextualise the social changes that took place in the late 1950s and early 1950s. It also builds on pupils' knowledge and understanding of Communism that they developed in the year 9 unit about Communist Russia. This unit prepares pupils for the next, where knowledge of post-war American culture and society is helpful for pupils to engage meaningfully with the contemporaneous fight for civil rights.

1. The American Dream in the 1940s and 1950s
2. Post-war American popular culture
3. McCarthyism and the second Red Scare
4. Change in Post-War America

• Pupils know that the Second World War had transformed some aspects of American society.
• Pupils know that communism was a political ideology that had gained power in Russia during WW1.