Today David was quite excited about the Primary Curriculum Review which is due at the end of October. He suggests that there will be broader areas of learning experiences; there will be less in new programmes of Study. We will be encouraged to spend longer doing less and there will be greater inter subject connections. This is certainly good news and will involve better quality teaching and learning opportunities.
David always refers back to what we are looking to achieve when we teach geography – referring to it as a table with four legs and a table top.
1. Where / How do the children progress and what opportunities do we offer the children to ensure that they are able to exhibit level 2, 3 4 or even level 5 capabilities? What opportunities are there for the children to reach conclusions, to reason and explain, to use simple or appropriate advanced vocabulary?
2. Geography should be an enquiry, experiential, investigative, independent personalised learning. What do we do to find out where the children are now? What do we do to move them on to where we want them to be in terms of the learning activity? How do we help make sense of geographical Enquiry processes?
3. There are really very few PoS and there will be even less in the new curriculum.
4. The Primary National Strategy encourages us to be imaginative and creative ensuring that we are robust i.e. the children are being appropriately challenged intellectually.
On top of all this we have the topic / theme / issue / dimension.
If there is no BIG idea then don’t teach it!
Higher order thinking skills will be a key focus in the new National curriculum.
The buzz words (for interviews) then at the moment are metacognition, robust curriculum and appropriate expectations.
We then looked at the theme of RIVERS. The big idea being ‘Through erosion and deposition, river water changes the landscape’.
The unit hangs around a series of key questions which are
1. What is a river?
2. What happens along the course of a river?
3. Where do rivers get their water?
4. How does a river change from source to mouth?
5. Where do rivers start and how do they change the landscape?
6. Why does water suddenly fall along a river?
7. Why do rivers bend?
8. What happens at the mouth of a river?
9. Is this the most famous meander in the world?
10. How and why does the River Otter and its valley change from source to mouth?
11. How can we help infant children to learn about rivers?
Throughout the unit there are a range of activities to engage the children – many of which involve observing, discussing, describing, comparing, contrasting, reasoning, estimating, explaining, describing patterns, processes, links and relationships, suggesting explanations and conclusions. There are connections to many other curriculum areas.
In terms of attainment it was interesting to note that all agreed that attainment does not have to be replicable – it is a snap shot at that moment in time!
In December, Devon Education Services are planning a day conference which will focus on the current curriculum review emphasis on the importance of a strong flexible learning programme. The day is themed ‘Creative and coherent cross-curricular planning in the primary curriculum: the weather and our world’. I hope that I will be able to attend.
