Building Community Through the Classroom

Opening the door into how IDL is helping our class come to life!

My last couple of posts have centred around my journey with Interdisciplinary Learning and the fact that, for so long, I didn’t quite ‘get it’. I’ll quickly recap this before moving on…

Within the Scottish Curriculum, Interdisciplinary Learning (IDL) is one of the four contexts for learning along with:

• Ethos and life of the school

• Opportunities for personal achievement

• The curriculum and subject areas

IDL was always a part of my classroom but it wasn’t carried out with much thought (in hindsight). I started to notice that at staff meetings and in-service days, it always featured heavily on the agenda and I could never fully understand why.

I’ve also mentioned on previous posts, that I work part-time and so miss quite a bit of staff training and updates. Time is so stretched and I was frustrated that I couldn’t indulge in any real professional dialogue in order for me to better understand IDL.

Thanks to Nick Hood from ‘The Interdisciplinary Network’ ((https://idlnetwork.substack.com/?utm_source=global-search, I was able to see the significance and importance of IDL.

And so began a very exciting journey!

Our Lovely Visitors

I had reached out to several local business and groups regarding our IDL project. The project itself doesn’t really have ‘a problem’ as such as many IDL enquiries do. It is more of a ‘Creative Arts’ focus which aims to educate the class about the utter joy that drama, music, dance and art can bring.

We have, so far, had a guitar player, a piper and a ballet dancer all in to visit us. Next month we have a performing arts graduate and a local artist popping in! Busy busy!

What is lovely is that these are all local people. I’ve also been able to build my own professional network which feels absolutely fantastic. I don’t live in the area I work in so I don’t have those local connections. Through our IDL, this is starting to change. Having visitors into our class has allowed the pupils to meet with new people who live nearby and who run local businesses in the area. It is opening their eyes to the bigger world around them, not just locally but nationally too.

Linking Curricular Areas

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Our recent ballet lesson introduced us to some French language which was completely new to the pupils. Creating thank you cards and letters integrates writing for real contexts, and baking banana bread as a thank you gift for each visitor (which we do each time), promotes cooking and measuring in real life situations. It also, by giving the baking to our visitor, allows the pupils to see the simple, (but very powerful), beauty in giving thanks to others.

Our art last week focused on a musical piece by Albeniz called ‘Asturias’. This is a beautiful arrangement played by the guitar teacher who came to visit us in August. The song is about a volcano erupting in a Spanish village. Our art focused on creating volcanoes using paints, pastels and chalks. Some of the children chose to demonstrate their understanding of the piece by creating dramatic scenes in small groups and others created an online document summarising the event. The children’s enthusiasm and engagement were high, there was a real ‘buzz’ in the room and the class were excited to show their interpretations to their peers. An initial guitar solo led the way to a colourful art lesson, a drama focus and some imaginative writing. Brilliant!

A Rich Curriculum

The way the learning is in our classroom feels ‘rich’. It feels connected and relevant. It feels exciting.

Already, I am noticing little shifts in the classroom. The questions the children are asking are more advanced. They are up-levelling their vocabulary and are using more complex sentence structures in their writing. They are discussing the different things we can do to reach out and help others.

What I need to do next is to re-group with the children and re-focus. We are currently using a ‘floor book’ to record our learning journey. This documents our questions, photographs and next steps in learning. I want to make sure that this time, I stop and regroup with the pupils to make sure there is flexibility in the curriculum and movement in where they (and I), want our learning to go next.

I can’t say that ALL of this is due to our IDL but it I’m certain there is a link. What is also vitally important is how excited I am by this project. I am hopping (sometimes literally), into school feeling eager, enthusiastic and energetic. Making connections has inspired me to keep reaching out and the wonderful feedback regarding our class is brilliant to hear.

I’ve been teaching for eighteen years and genuinely felt that the best years of my career were behind me but actually, I think I might just have a fair few left!

Photo by Dmitry Shamis on Unsplash