Mapping the NC skills across the Humanities

[Dan Lyndon]

I am involved in planning some training for foundation subjects in my borough and one of the things that we are going to do is see if there are some common skills across the Humanities NC targets. For example the organisation & communication Key element in History must surely be represented in a similar format for RE and Geography. Equally there should be some progression within the levels based on Blooms taxonomy ie from lower order comprehension tasks to higher order analysis / synthesis tasks. Has anyone attempted this before? if so can I have a look at your results? Do people think this is a worthwhile activity?

[Guest]

I am involved in planning some training for foundation subjects in my borough and one of the things that we are going to do is see if there are some common skills across the Humanities NC targets. For example the organisation & communication Key element in History must surely be represented in a similar format for RE and Geography. Equally there should be some progression within the levels based on Blooms taxonomy ie from lower order comprehension tasks to higher order analysis / synthesis tasks. Has anyone attempted this before? if so can I have a look at your results? Do people think this is a worthwhile activity?

Sounds like a monumental waste of time to me Dan.

I think it would be far more useful would be to start with BLOOM and ask your audience to think of ways of integrating this into their teaching........ then look for common ground.

Please don't give the NC ATs an intellectual legitimacy they clearly do not deserve!

http://www.educationforum.co.uk/HA/bloom.htm

[Dan Lyndon]

I don't anticipate this being a detailed piece of work - approx 15-20 mins in an INSET, I was just interested to see if there was some common skill areas across Humanities which would allow a bit more cross-curricular work. You make a great point about starting with Blooms, that is where I was planning to start. With no disrespect to the non-historians I believe they may have a lot to learn from the way things are done in History re skills acquisition.

[John Simkin]

I don't anticipate this being a detailed piece of work - approx 15-20 mins in an INSET, I was just interested to see if there was some common skill areas across Humanities which would allow a bit more cross-curricular work. You make a great point about starting with Blooms, that is where I was planning to start. With no disrespect to the non-historians I believe they may have a lot to learn from the way things are done in History re skills acquisition.

What is the attitude about cross-curricular work in today’s National Curriculum. I was a member of an advisory committee that was involved in negotiating with the team who drew up the history section of the National Curriculum. We were told that the history group were told not to talk to other subject teams because they did not want any cross-curricular work to take place. It is true that those instructions came from Margaret Thatcher and she has long gone. However, Tony Blair appears to want to reinforce Thatcher’s original ideas. For example, his recent speech on how classes in comprehensive schools should be streamed etc. What does our great leader say about cross-curricular work? I imagine he does not like it. After all, it is not often a feature of public school lessons.

[Dan Lyndon]

http://www.comptonhistory.com/misc/misc.htm

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was working on linking the NC levels with Blooms Taxonomy (the triggers that Lesley Ann provided in her seminar on Thinking Skills on the History Teachers Discussion Forum). I have now completed this and you can see it on my website above. I think this has real potential, especially as this was also done in Geog and RE and potentially will be introduced across the whole school. Any improvements will be most welcome.