Cross-Curricular Approaches To Life In Ancient Egypt

Cross-curricular and discrete teaching
A cross-curricular approach to teaching is the organisation of different subject areas under a major concept, theme or topic (Savage, 2011). Taking a cross-curricular approach to teaching can arguably, offer a creative way to develop children’s knowledge, skills and understanding, while motivating them to learn through interconnected subjects. The interconnectivity of foundation subjects can be evidenced in Appendix 2. The topic, life in Ancient Egypt, has been linked to various foundation subjects including history, geography, art and drama (Appendix 2). The link between geography and history allows children to understand the geographical location of Ancient Egypt and its significance for life in Ancient
Egypt. Geography is linked with history, where the ancient historical context forms a large basis for understanding the culture and society in Ancient Egypt.
In lesson 2 history is linked with drama, which allows children to act out and understand the roles of how people functioned within society during the Ancient Egyptian time period. Lastly, in the third lesson history is linked with art which allows children to pictorially create a representation of life in Ancient Egypt, based on the historical, geographical and cultural knowledge gained in the other two lessons. The interconnectivity between foundation subjects as evidenced in Appendix 2, indicates that taking a cross-curricular approach to teaching ensures greater opportunities for a broad and balanced curriculum (Barnes, 2012). Overall, this demonstrates that by taking a cross-curricular approach, teachers can provide a creative way of linking subjects through a common theme to give pupils a motivating yet meaningful and
holistic context for learning (Jarvis, 2009).
Typically, researchers who disagree with the cross-curricular view instead offer a discrete method of teaching where an independent teaching approach to subjects is arguably more beneficial to a child’s learning (Alexander, 2010). Smith (2008) claims that a discrete approach to teaching allows teachers to focus on the skills essential for each subject. It may also provide easier opportunities for assessment. Ensuring progression and continuity of skills and knowledge is a major challenge in cross-curricular teaching, though a discrete approach is thought to be easier to plan and monitor progression and development (Smith, 2008). This indicates that a discrete method of teaching for certain subjects may be beneficial in certain aspects, such as assessment. However, teaching topics in a cross-curricular method provides advantages that discrete teaching cannot, such as offering a creative way of developing children’s knowledge and skills. Therefore, teachers should incorporate both discrete and cross-curricular methods of teaching in order to provide a broad and balanced curriculum.
The benefits of cross-curricular topic-based teaching
As topic-based teaching can create connections between various subjects, teachers are able to utilise different pedagogical techniques to help children learn.
More specifically, cross-curricular topic-based teaching can increase pupil engagement and understanding as teachers can more easily cater for various learning styles. Gardner (1983) proposed a theory of multiple intelligences where he argued that there are eight variations of intelligences; linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, body-kinaesthetic, music-rhythmic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic. Teachers can accommodate for different learning styles by teaching a topic. The topic life in Ancient Egypt is linked to several foundation subjects and therefore can target various learning styles (Appendix 2). For example, in the drama and history lesson the use of ICT to show historical videos and play traditional music, will target both visual and auditory learners (Appendix 2). Additionally, kinaesthetic learners will be naturally catered for through role-play. This demonstrates that a more balanced curriculum that incorporates topic-based teaching through foundation subjects is more useful to leverage the intelligences that some pupils may have. Whereas, discrete teaching typically targets linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, but often disregards other types of intelligences (Gardner and Hatch, 1989). This suggests that by linking different foundation subjects through a topic,
teachers can enhance pupil engagement and understanding by accommodating for different learning styles.