Author: Y. McBlain

What is good interdisciplinary teaching and learning?

The latest national guidance we have on the features of good interdisciplinary learning offers the following list:

  1. Starts with the experiences and outcomes, carefully selected within a few curriculum areas.
  2. Clear success criteria focus the intended learning, within & across the experiences & outcomes.
  3. Connections between disciplines within the IDL are clear & meaningful.
  4. Learning does not become “lost” within the context.
  5. Purpose, benefits & types of IDL are carefully considered & understood by all.
  6. Planning clearly shows where children are applying existing knowledge & understanding.
  7. Children can discuss connections, compare & contrast contributions of different curriculum areas, use & develop higher-order thinking skills
  8. Progression is clear across the different curriculum areas.
  9. A whole-school framework/overview of IDL is developed to ensure progression & coherence.
  10. Assessment is planned as an integral part of learning & teaching, based around the success criteria.
  11. Principles of curriculum design are used to inform teacher’s decisions about organising learning & their evaluations.

These were defined in a presentation by Graeme Logan and Joanne MacLauchlan in December 2012.

St Bernadette’s RC PS Track Coverage of the Experiences and Outcomes

Marianne Savage, principal teacher at St Bernadette’s RC PS has created Microsoft Publisher poster versions of the experiences and outcomes at first and second levels of Curriculum for Excellence. She developed these from the South Ayrshire Early Years Annual overview document below. Marianne has very kindly agreed to share these (now converted into PDF format to ease access – you will need to assemble the pages and enlarge the documents if printing):

Early Level South Ayrshire Annual Overview       First Level 

 Second Level sheet 1                                             Second Level sheet 2

Marianne’s head teacher, Cathy Quinn,  had these printed A2 size by Printworks so that staff throughout the school could highlight the E & Os being addressed by learning and teaching. Staff use colour coding to monitor coverage via this simple tracking system and record the levels of breadth and depth achieved. Click here to visit St Bernadette’s school blog, and contact Marianne or Cathy on 01324 503400 for more information.