![]() Each new multidisciplinary topic starts with an authentic introduction to provoke students’ curiosity and put them at the centre of the forthcoming unit. An example in practice: Hunter’s Bar Junior School, Sheffield, UKĪt Hunter’s Bar Junior School (HBJS) in Sheffield, Year 5 curriculum design is guided using the above planning pathway model ( Figure 1). Using these shapes when planning and implementing a unit can allow students to live the experiences of a protagonist from inside the subject. shape 6: Oedipus – fall to rise to fall.shape 5: Cinderella – rise to fall to rise.shape 3: man in the hole – fall to rise. ![]() that students could experience within a topic: ![]() Here are the six shapes from Reagan et al. A broad array of topics in Key Stage 2, such as the impact of deforestation, the transatlantic slave trade in Britain or the impact of global warming, can be mapped out as a journey, with slowly revealed plot points to be experienced by students. Curriculum designers can use these as a template to map the experience that they wish their students to receive within a topic. (2016) provide six basic shapes that influence the emotional arcs of narrative. The six shapes of narrativeĪndrew J Reagan et al. This not only brings solitary tales to life in the classroom but also, at a strategic level, can help the overall learning journey of any topic, theme or subject become memorable for all students. By using tried and tested narrative structures and formulae, often found in films and novels, school curriculum designers can take full advantage of the cognitive and psychological effects of storytelling. I believe that these components of effective storytelling can be leveraged to enhance overarching curriculum design. Willingham (2010) refers to the four Cs of narrative: causality, conflict, complication and characters. Stories provide us with solvable puzzles, endings that are likely to produce new insights and ‘a web of interconnecting and causally related parts’, making the story easy to store in memory (Tharby, 2018, p. Stories are easy to understand, easy to remember and are of interest to the audience – their predictable, causal structure, and invitation to readers to make inferences, support thinking and develop schema construction in long-term memory (Willingham, 2010). In their paper ‘Knowledge and memory: The real story’ (1995), Schank and Abelson claim that people are wired to be sensitive to information received in a narrative format, and argue that stories about personal experience are the key components of human memory and knowledge. But why is this the case? What can psychology reveal about why stories have such powerful advantages? The cognitive advantages of stories The reason why stories are so effective is that we are predisposed to being ‘swept away’ by how they are told and the sentiment behind them (Green and Brock, 2002, p. Stories provide a powerful tool for creating meaning in our lives and contexts and, consequently, organising information in our long-term memories. Alex Beauchamp, Assistant Headteacher and Lead Practitioner, Hunter’s Bar Junior School, UK CPD Expert Adviser, Teacher Development Trust, UK
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