From ‘splendid isolation' to productive alliances: developing meaningful cross-curricular approaches.

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.

Some history departments find themselves under pressure to incorporate skills and competences from alternative curricula. Others find that with the pressure to ease transition issues in Year 7, history can almost disappear into an amalgam of rather random subjects taught by one overarching teacher. Steve Illingworth describes a department that faced both of these issues, but endeavoured to make the best of the situation. While the new ‘Project Time' curriculum was certainly enhancing pupils' group work and presentation skills, there was concern that some of the challenge and excitement of history lessons could be disappearing. This article describes the planning behind a series of lessons which tries to promote historical learning while learning from the successes of the competence-based curriculum.