Developing an exciting and engaging Creative Curriculum at Cage Green

Changes to the History, Art, Design Technology and Geography Curriculums The National Curriculum came into force in September this year. The History syllabus has extended, although is not chronological as feared, it does focus more on the impact people throughout History have had on our country today. Geography requires many more basic skills and knowledge of locations around the world. Design and Technology has broadened to include more focus on Food and Nutrition. Art is more keenly focused on the acquisition of basic skills and knowledge of Artists and Architects.

Why teach History, Geography, Art and D.T? History helps children to develop the skills in the modern world to look beyond the headlines, to ask questions properly and to have the confidence to express their own opinion. Geography provokes and answers questions about the natural and man-made worlds. Through their studies, pupils encounter different societies and cultures, gaining an understanding of the interdependence of the global community. Art and D.T lessons provide the opportunity for pupils to push the boundaries of their own creativity whilst being taught traditional skills and techniques.

Key areas to develop at our school As Ofsted stated we need to develop the teaching of all subjects across the school equally. As a staff we have recognised the need to plan engaging and exciting cross curricular topics that are taught in a meaningful way, to involve all pupils and allow them achieve and succeed. We need to ensure that every child is having their entitlement to the National Curriculum and ensure that there is a progression in the key skills being taught throughout the school.

What have we done in response? This year we have developed an exciting new topic based curriculum which is based entirely on the New National Curriculum. The New curriculum has skills to be taught in each Keystage and our new topic overview runs on a two year cycle with the whole key stage working on the same topic. This provides teachers with a larger team in which to share planning and skills and give children the opportunity to work in different settings and in differentiated groups where appropriate.

Blocking subjects Children learn best when they are immersed and engaged in a topic. Teaching children in a secondary school fashion where you may have half an hour of R.E then have to switch to a Geography lesson on an entirely different topic once a week does not really work for Primary age children. Blocking frees up class timetables so that the afternoons can be dedicated to Science, R.E or topic teaching for a week or more.

It is so much easier for children to remember what they have learnt the day before than the week before and learning in this way provides an opportunity for much deeper understanding of a subject – to embed the learning. So within a typical term the R.E syllabus may be taught for 3 extended sessions for a week. The science topic for that term may be covered in 3 weeks of longer more meaningful sessions. Topic would be covered for 2 or 3 weeks but with links made to other subjects such as Literacy, Maths or ICT - the opportunities for topic teaching and learning are vastly extended.

The Future We want every child to achieve their full potential and be given as many opportunities to develop into a happy, confident and successful individual. Creative subjects are an important part of developing the whole child and, just as importantly, are fun!

The profile of History, Geography, Art, and D.T have been raised in the last year with projects such as INSPIRE to create our Totem Poles and more activities planned relating to the Commemoration of World War I in the near future. I hope to raise the profile of our young artists in the community and provide greater opportunities for all our pupils to experience the joy of some creative freedom whilst ensuring our gifted and talented pupils are given the opportunities to further their talents.