About St. Mark's — St Mark's Church of England Primary School

Cross-curricular topics

We believe that children learn better when they are able to connect ideas from a number of different traditional subject disciplines.

Aims of cross-curricular working:

to record children’s development of a range of knowledge, understanding and skills over a substantial period of time;
to keep the record of children’s learning journey in one place;
for children to develop an understanding of knowledge as being fluid and connected across artificial subject boundaries;
to develop children’s writing skills in the context of real learning across a variety of subject areas;
to provide a way to celebrate and value the process of learning and writing alongside the finished product;
for parents to have a better understanding of the work children are doing across a wider range of subjects and get involved in supporting learning at home;
to share learning with teachers, peers and parents in a more meaningful context; and
to take pride in work, both the draft and finished product.

Practical working

All topic-based work will be completed on various loose leaf A4 sheets and kept for presentation in topic books.

Topic Books:

celebrate quality not quantity;
show learning and progress rather than a record of what has happened in a lesson;
are not a scrapbook or a presentation folder, rather a record of a learning journey;
foster and encourage pride in work and presentation;
avoid over reliance on pre-published material; and
often provide an opportunity for original art work as cover design