Creativity is about us taking responsibility for our curriculum...

Imagine a multi-disciplinary, topic-based curriculum in which children learn in an immersive environment that is tailored to a specific theme, eg;

Year 1 learn about Robots in their Robots Topic.  They come in on the first day after the Half Term to a classroom that is full of robots of all shapes and sizes.  They play with them, photograph them, draw them.  During the course of the Topic, they learn about electricity, including how to  wire circuits that make robots move and make their eyes glow.  They learn how to build robots from Lego, K’Nex and from junk boxes.  They create animations of their robot’s adventures using Stop-Frame Animation.  The films that they make are shared with the world via Youtube.  The children watch their own and their friends animated adventures at home.  They write stories about their robots and dramatise them.  They learn robot dances.  They learn how to programme robots, how to calculate like robots and they collaborate together to create huge robots that live in the classroom with them for the duration of the topic.

Year 2 have a Pirates Topic for the Half Term.  When children come into the classroom on the first day the classroom is dressed with Jolly Rogers and treasure chests.  Every child is given an eye-patch and immediately makes a skull and crossbones T-Shirt that they wear as their uniform every day of the Topic.  They have Pirate names.  They count their gold in Numeracy, recount their pirate adventures in Literacy, read about other pirates in their reading time and explore maps in their hunt for treasure.  They go to the seaside to smell the sea, to look at boats and ships and to plot their adventures on the High Seas.

Meanwhile, Year 6 pupils study London.  The Topic involves a two day, one night, stay in London, which is paid for from the curriculum budget.  Pupils set off early in the morning on the school minibuses, bought through the economies of scale that a multi-school model enables.  They arrive on the outskirts of the city and then take the tube into the centre.  They visit the museums, galleries and landmarks that they have studied in class.  They take photographs and videos on their IPads and blog about their experiences later on in the evening.  For many children this is their first visit to London and their first experience away from home.  On Day 2 they visit Tate Modern.  They have a packed lunch by Millennium Bridge and debate the relative merits of modern versus traditional art.  The trip is repeated four times over the course of two weeks with pupils from each of the partner schools.  Some of the staff accompany two trips to act as guides and experts.  Pupils from all of the schools meet together after the trips to talk about their experiences.  Some groups collaborate on a follow-up project via Skype video conferencing.