Case study: Using history to launch the creative curriculum

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.

At its core, the creative curriculum is a carefully planned, thematic approach to teaching and learning, designed to support and stimulate children's natural curiosity and creativity. Children can work in depth, giving them time to reflect, consolidate and transfer their learning. It places direct experience at the centre of the curriculum and allows the children to express their knowledge, skills and understanding in a range of different media. (http://www.teachingexpertise.com/).

Learning Objectives

Skills-based objectives lend themselves particularly well to a creative theme, and make sometimes wild and imaginative activities equally beneficial to the children, as when learning objectives are rigidly applied to the National Curriculum Schemes of Work. Skills such as: enquiry, deduction, investigation, note-taking, inferring, sorting, questioning, communicating, sequencing, considering, organising, listening, using appropriate vocabulary, presenting information and applying knowledge.

This case study shows how a simple discovery on a school trip lead to a project, which grew to provide an undercurrent of interest and excitement because, as far as the children were concerned, it had nothing to do with school work, but was the result of happenstance. Having...