Children's Work

Excellence and Enjoyment

Making links between curriculum subjects and areas of learning can deepen children’s understanding by providing opportunities to reinforce and enhance learning. As part of Excellence and Enjoyment, Our Lady’s School tries to make these links through whole school curriculum mapping. We do this in a number of ways:

• Building concepts – when children meet the same or related information in different ways, it helps build concepts and also adds to the richness of their experience;
• Providing opportunities for practising skills – skills such as using tools carefully, skimming and scanning, and analysing data, which are taught in one subject or learning area, can be developed through purposeful use in other areas;
• Assisting memory – one of the ways memory develops is having opportunities to practise and use information in different contexts;
• Providing opportunities for application of knowledge – applying knowledge in new contexts involves children in higher order thinking skills, such as reasoning and problem solving;
• Providing opportunities for learners to recognise and develop key aspects of learning – looking for patterns and relationships, and problem solving and reasoning, for example, can be applied across the curriculum.

Learning is most likely to be enhanced when the links are clear and recognisable to the children.