Step 1
Take a teacher with a passion for ICT add it to a teacher with a passion for English. Leave them to discuss the curriculum for 30 minutes to identify common areas and then ask them to be ‘creative.’ Explore an intersection, an overlap, a commonality. Who knows, you might find you teach the same / similar topic. We found out that we both taught bullying, but for different purposes. In ICT to look at statistics and spreadsheets, in English to write a leaflet.
(Incidentally, why didn’t the students say anything to us?)
Step 2
Ask the teachers to mix their passions together and you get passionate teachings working together to conceive a shared unit of work.
In our project, we are addressing the cross curricular dimension ‘Technology and the Media’ and subject key processes ‘writing composition’ (English) with ‘developing ideas’ and ‘communicating information’ (ICT). To date, we have two small cross curricular teams co-writing units of work on ‘Persuasive Writing and Digital Graphics’ and ‘Game Design for Creative Writing.’
There have been clear benefits to all concerned. Improved inter-department relationships, its challenged traditional teaching methods formerly employed and it has required improved planning from both teams, as there is now a shared responsibility and set date for when this SoW will be delivered. We hope the students are going to enjoy the experience and if nothing else, at least we are more efficient with our time, leaving time for something else!
Is there anything stopping you getting together with another curriculum area, identifying a common topic, somewhere there is overlap or commonality and devising a SOW together?
No?
Thought not. So what are you waiting for.
PS – I will let you know how we get on.