Pearson - BBC Active

With the promise of reduced programmes of study for the wider curriculum, now is the time for schools to get creative with their cross-curricular planning, says Chris Fenton, associate head and primary publisher at Pearson Education...

The new curriculum

After months of speculation, we have just begun to unpick the expectations of the new coalition government’s version of the National Curriculum While the level of prescription in the Programmes of Study for English, maths and science is much higher than we’d been led to believe would be the case, it seems that schools will be much freer to innovate in other subjects:

‘So, while it will be for schools to shape their own curricula, we will maintain a requirement for the teaching of art and design, design and technology, geography, history, ICT, music and physical education across all the primary years. Programmes of Study in these subjects will, however, be much shorter to allow for the maximum level of innovation at school level in the development of content in these areas.’

Since the Programmes of Study in the foundation subjects are going to be shorter, the opportunities to link them become more prevalent, but whilst some schools find innovation in the curriculum easier than others, the same issue will no doubt arise, ‘Where do we begin? Finding excellent cross curricular resources is a good starting point.’

Recently, I was fortunate enough to find myself in a Y6 classroom where children were experiencing the fear and disruption of air raids during WW2. The inventive teacher had downloaded some air-raid warning, bomb blast and all clear sound effects from the internet and recorded them onto a loop system. Then throughout the lesson, which incidentally was centred around measurement using rationing, the sound effects would play at deafening volume, at which point children were ordered to drop everything and seek shelter under tables until the all clear sounded. It was fun at first, but as the lesson progressed and the sirens continued, the children were beginning to understand as far as possible the disruption that WW2 wrought on children in the cities.

As the day progressed, the learning in this exciting and innovative classroom developed further. Literacy involved writing from experience about air-raids and the cross curricular learning in the afternoon involved learning about the materials required to build the most effective air raid shelters, which of course were then constructed and tested.

By the end of the day, children were excited by their experiential learning and were naturally buzzing for more.

This experience is just one of many I have enjoyed whilst researching cross-curricular teaching for my books on the subject. I frequently see schools around the country at all different levels in that cross-curricular teaching process. Some are a long way down the road and have built engrossing cross-curricular plans with great resources that are well thought out and continuously evolving, whilst others are still finding it very difficult to find a starting point from which to build.

One thing that stands out about all of these schools, however, is their desire to make changes to how the curriculum is interpreted. The school curriculum is the tool by which we can help children to make sense of the world around them and during these ever-changing, unprecedented times, it has never been more important for us to be innovative in the way we empower and equip them.

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