Literature: Reflection and Analysis of the Cross-Curriculum

When reading the literature, I was prompted to think about our own Curriculum, questioning why Music was not an exam-based subject with the mainstream Primary framework. I do know, however, of children that have a personal music teacher who visits my school to teach piano and brass lessons to the pupils. This made me consider that there may be places where children do not always have access to the arts because of their social surroundings and priorities. I know that in my own school, lessons in Maths and English are paramount and are viewed as top priorities within the school. They are the ‘core’ subjects closely followed by Science.

After analysing Grainger’s quotes about using multi-pedagogical processes, I noted down the times that I had taught in some creative form or another. This included the use of freeze frames, role-play scenarios, storytelling, audio-visual PowerPoints, videos and resources. Using creative methods during maths, such as drawing to create mathematical tables has shown me the everyday occurrence of cross-curricular links. After undertaking my literature review, I then had a discussion with the head of Wider Curriculum about my Religious Educational work. He was impressed with the way that I had incorporated Drama into my lessons and told me that I could make use of the cross-curricular opportunities given to me in the Not As We Know It Curriculum (below) for Religious Education. Within the curriculum, the cross-curricular links allow me to undertake tasks that might be seen in other lessons such as drawing tables and collecting data, which makes me reflect on the notion again of learning through an area or subject, because children are using maths within the Religious Education and therefore not just learning how to undertake mathematical tasks in just one lesson, but to continue putting their skills into practice. This is something that I recently used in my own lessons this upcoming term, including creating tally charts about each other’s religious beliefs within the class. By enabling them to undertake a data collection task, they are also learning about their own classroom community and perhaps learning more about themselves and their environment because of the process.