Our Approach to Interdisciplinary Learning
WHAT IS INTERDISCIPLINARY LEARNING?
Interdisciplinary Learning (IDL) is an approach that brings together teacher co-planning, facilitation skills and a focus on giving learners the thinking skills they need to handle additional responsibility for their learning.
It is a planned experience that brings disciplines together in one coherent programme or project. The different disciplines plan and execute as one.
These disciplines might fall within one curricular area (e.g. languages, the sciences) or between several curricular areas. IDL enables learners to:
learn new knowledge or skills, and develop new understanding of concepts
draw on prior knowledge, understanding and skills
transfer and apply that collective knowledge to new problems or other areas of learning
In St.Cadoc's, we truly value children as authors of their own learning and our approach to interdisciplinary learning reflects this. All children take part in "Learning Expeditions". The whole school have a theme and children explore this through sharing their wonderings, posing questions and finding out the answers together as a class. Each class goes on their own personalised expedition and the findings are shared in a celebration with family, friends and classes across the school. More information regarding our Learning Expeditions can be found in the powerpoint below which was recently shared with other schools across East Renfrewshire Council and The West Partnership.
Working alongside pupils and staff, we developed a thematic planner to ensure breadth, progression and continuity in learning across Social Studies. The planner provides a range of themes each term, designed to build upon pupils' knowledge and skills as they progress through the school.
Children are given the opportunity to briefly explore each theme before voting for the one they would most like to investigate further. This then becomes the starting point for pupil-led enquiry, where children share what they already know and what they would like to find out. Teachers use their interests, ideas and questions to plan meaningful learning experiences, ensuring pupils have a genuine voice in shaping the direction of their learning.