The amount of content to be taught in the foundation subjects in primary can feel daunting. How can anyone be expert across so many subjects? I’m often asked how to get to grips across so many programmes of study and whether it’s possible to do justice to them all.
I’m a great believer in fewer things in greater depth. I find it helpful to draw on ideas that are both common sense and backed by some hefty research. For example, we know intuitively that we remember more about a topic if we’ve heard it in a story. As Dan Willingham says, ‘our brains privilege story’.
We’ve also got the findings from the ‘Just reading’ research from Sussex University where classes read two novels at a fast pace over 12 weeks. In the study, students’ mean comprehension increased by 8.5 months overall and 16 months for weak readers.
Some primary and secondary schools have trialled ‘Just reading’ in their settings. They have also found that it’s possible to get significant gains in reading proficiency through offering pupils high quality texts.
I’ve drawn on this research to show that it’s possible to help our pupils know more, remember more and do more when we are teaching units across the curriculum. It’s possible to extend this impact beyond literacy or English lessons. If we can find high quality texts to support other parts of the curriculum, learning is likely to last longer.
Demand from colleagues in schools asking for suggestions for high quality texts to support topics across the curriculum led me to set up The Teachers’ Collection. We have been working on this for the past year and now have over 100 texts suggestions to help with curriculum planning in primary. Each text suggestion is accompanied by a draft planning unit and a draft knowledge organiser.
We are now launching The Teachers’ Collection 2.0 where we have the book suggestions and planning and vocabulary resources, together with all the primary subject networks, knowledge bites and resources from Myatt & Co, a primary curriculum booster course and monthly live check-ins for catching up about how things are going.
I’m doing a webinar on Monday 29 January 5pm to explain how it will all work. If you’d like to find out more, you can sign up here and if you can’t make it on the day, it will be recorded.
Until next time
Mary
Leading the Diverse Curriculum 6-part programme is now live. It will support you throughout an academic year, through a half-termly virtual session. We also provide two places on the course as we believe curriculum development is not a one-person piece of work!
You can watch the introductory webinar with Bennie Kara, Hannah Wilson and me here.