Building a connected curriculum
I spend a lot of my time talking about or thinking about the primary curriculum, whether it’s a specific subject area, or looking at how staff can develop teaching and learning approaches across it. And I know that we are all waiting to see the results of the current curriculum review, however, the phrase ‘evolution rather than revolution’ continues to make me think that not an awful lot is going to change. I may be completely wrong of course, and everyone is speculating, but that is what my gut is telling me. Some elements might be removed, changed or adapted, but I think, at least for now, it’s still going to be a curriculum that is built on developing children’s knowledge across the required subject areas.
An issue that I see schools facing regularly is how to timetable their curriculum effectively too. I was just yesterday speaking to new subject leaders about leading their subject, and there was a lot of talk around how some teachers were finding it difficult to give subjects like Art the required time to teach it effectively. I think this is a common issue with such a big focus on reading, writing and maths, plus phonics. But I also think that there are a lot of schools thinking in the wrong way about the wider curriculum too. Let me explain…
A refined and more focussed curriculum
Now, I’m not calling anyone out here. Developing a strong curriculum is a huge job. And even if you think you just need to change a small element of your curriculum, it can have a large impact on other areas. But I think some schools are getting it wrong in terms of how much they are trying to tackle. I remember starting to look at a school’s history curriculum around a year ago, and for one unit of learning, they had a list of between 30-40 key pieces of knowledge that they wanted the children to know by the end of the unit. And I get it, you want the children to have a good grasp over who the Romans were, but they don’t need to know forty things about them. The National Curriculum talks about the Romans and their impact on Britain.
So, what are the five key aspects about the Romans that allowed them to expand or meant they had an impact on Britain?
1. Who were the Romans?
2. How did they expand their empire so quickly?
3. Why did they come to Britain?
4. What was Romanisation?
5. Why did they leave?
Essentially, you’re telling the story of who the Romans were and how they had an impact on Britain. But I don’t need them to tell me how many bricks there are in Hadrian’s wall or remember every single Roman Emperor’s name – I don’t know any adults that could tell me those things. But if, by the end of the unit (5-6 lessons), I’m confident they can answer these five questions, then I know they have developed an understanding of the important knowledge they need to know about the Romans. Furthermore, I’m not trying to cram my timetable full of facts. If the curriculum becomes more focussed and refined, it is much easier to cover everything more effectively.
If you want to know more about ways of developing units of learning in this way, check out Focus Education’s Learning challenge curriculum to see how they have structured the curriculum progressively in history, geography, science, art, DT and PSHCE so that everything works in this way.
Developing concepts or golden threads
Something I have written a lot about is the idea of golden threads. I’ve been approached to speak at the Thinking Deeply about Primary Education event in Trafford in March. Here’s the link if you’re interested (all proceeds go to charity!):
What I plan to talk about is exactly this. Developing a focus on key concepts that run throughout your curriculum. If you identify the key concepts that you want to teach the children in say, history, alongside having a really refined progression of knowledge, everything will start to connect up much better, develop better links to prior learning, create a lasting knowledge base for the children and, ultimately, be quicker and easier to teach.
An example would be the concept of monarchy. If children learn about our monarchy in KS1, when they learn about pharaohs in ancient Egypt, it’ll be easier for them to understand the concept. If they later learn about the Romans and Greeks, they will make connections first to other kings, but then develop that into understanding other forms of leadership, like emperors and dictators. They can then link this to learning about the British Empire, with the king or queen at the head of the empire as the British monarch. Every time they experience something relating to monarchy, they will build on their prior learning.
Other concepts such as trade might be a focus, but here’s where it starts to get clever. Trade, as a concept, will also apply in geography, and potentially in other areas of the curriculum. This means that when you teach about trade in history, you are giving children a grounding for learning they may do in geography and vice versa. If you consider your curriculum in this way, with dovetails and overlapping across the concepts that you encourage the children to study, you can develop an interconnected curriculum that essentially saves time, meaning that you don’t have to drop anything or cut anything short.
I’ve written about elements of this in these publications:
Golden Threads in History: Taking your Curriculum to the Next Level – Focus Education
Dangers and pitfalls
Of course there are dangers. The same concept can mean slightly different things within different subject disciplines and contexts. But it is okay to link them if we are aware of these differences – this is where good vocabulary teaching comes in. Another potential pitfall is that different subject disciplines can be less clear to the children and lines can become blurred. But again, as long as we are aware of this, we can be intentional with our teaching and ensure that this doesn’t happen!
Essentially, what I’m saying, is that if we really consider the knowledge that we want the children to learn alongside the five or six key concepts that are important to the specific subject we are thinking about, we can start to make better links, both within and across different subject areas, allowing us to maximise the way we use our time. This is not just promoting cross-curricular learning, but developing more purposeful, concept driven cross-curricular thinking.
What does your curriculum look like, and how could you build something better?
And if you want to have a chat about this very thing, you can book a chat with me here: