CROSS CURRICULUM

The popularity and push for STEM learning is gathering STEAM, as educators increasingly recognise the power of integrating Art with Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths curricula. This approach recognises Art as core to the development of creativity and thinking skills critical to problem-solving. The art programme here at High Meadows School - a progressive, independent, international Baccalaureate (IB) school - supports inquiry-based learning that departs from a siloed approach.

Although the government would argue differently, those of us on the education front-line know that there has been a sustained and systematic marginalisation of creative arts subjects in Secondary schools. The introduction of the EBacc in 2010 forced school leaders to focus their diminishing budgets on the subjects that the then minister for education deemed worthy. According to the 2015 Warwick Commission report this has, in part, contributed to a 50% drop in GCSE numbers for Design and Technology.

When James McAleese joined Mount Grace School as assistant head in 2015, his challenge was to embed digital learning across the school. Having regularly used GCSEPod at his previous school, he knew that the resource could play a huge part in the digital transformation of the school.

Can PE and Maths be mixed to achieve first rate teaching and learning? Surrey headteacher Steve Tindall has implemented the Maths of the Day programme throughout his whole school, to the benefit of teachers, support staff and pupils alike.

 

Innovate My School are teaming up with literacy / film champions A Tale Unfolds to run a film-making project for schools during the summer term. Aided by WeVideo, the initiative will look to improve literacy rates in half a term by at least one sub-level or two APS. It will also radically increase pupil engagement, through digital film-making and video-editing, by allowing them to make their own short films. The project is free to schools, and will be running until the end of the 2015 summer term.

Here is the third article in our series on maximising the use of visualisers across different curriculum areas. Below you will find practical tips on using visualisers to help pupils retain scientific concepts.

Use visualisers at key stages 1 and 2 to introduce material properties and spark pupils’ imagination:

  • Compare a variety of seeds and discuss the differences
  • Display a vegetable, photograph it, and repeat each day for a week to record the process of decay
  • Show different types of plants and flowers and label the parts

Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed the emergence of forensic science as a cross-disciplinary approach to basic science education in both primary and secondary school.

In most cases, this routinely involves a mock criminal investigation centred around a murder, and is situated almost exclusively within the science classroom. The BTEC in applied science, for example, which incorporates a fairly extensive forensic science component in its curriculum, has further catalysed the adoption of this model in classrooms throughout the UK, ensuring that theoretical science is given an authentic practical element.

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