Since I promote the Library Resource Centre as being at the heart of cross-curricular-dom, I thought it would be interesting to see how another secondary has tackled cross-curricular projects. This presentation from Dumbarton Academy discussed two specific projects: the Health and Well-being themed Fit 4 Life and the Citizenship-based 1 World (NB the school has also completed the Clim8 project). It would have been interesting to know how the staff decided upon these projects but I didn’t have time to stay for questions.
The projects themselves were pretty good, in my humblest, and there was some clever interdisciplinary work e.g. the Art department designing leaves, which later hold “Hopes for the future” comments at the end of the 1 World project. It wasn’t clear how much independent or group investigation had taken place within school departments; however, there was loads of information gathering via other organisations, such as Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (What it means to be Scottish exhibition), UNICEF (Trading game), Anne Frank Scotland and Tear Fund. There was no mention of the library throughout. Another unasked question, but one that I would like to follow up on.
Another interesting point was how the school adapted the structure of their projects as they learned from each one. Fascinating that they seemed to have started off with days free of classrooms and bells and gradually moved back to the normal school timetable. It was also noteworthy that the council had funded the pilot year, although the Headteacher made clear that the projects were now running within the school’s own budget.
And finally three cheers for the staff who developed the blog to run alongside the Fit4Life topic – although they had to upload the material in their own evenings to keep it up to date. There’s never enough hours in the day.
Otherwise, I got lots of follow up ideas for organisations, materials and resources from the seminar. Overall, a very useful use of an hour.
