Themes & Topics

Topics/themes are all about lumping learning together to cover the most amount of content and deliver on the intended curriculum of the school or setting. Do they work? That’s open to debate!

So, let’s have at it!

Proponents of topics like them because you’re able to cover a wide range of new learning in a short period of time. You are able to support children to make links between things easily through focussed interactions. For example, you may have a topic on ‘people who help us’ and support children to see the similarities and differences between paramedics and doctors.

Some children thrive in topic-based learning, but it can have a negative effect when children are disinterested, e.g. a child who has no interest in minibeasts may have 6 weeks of learning ‘done to them.’

Opponents of topics suggest that an alternative approach such as interest-led allows for more personalised learning approaches where each practitioner can go a little deeper in one area.

However, interest-led approaches often mean breadth of learning instead of depth. (I.e. you cover more but in less depth.) Adult-time is limited and cannot go particularly deep into an individual child’s interests as they have other children to attend to.

Choosing whether to teach using a topic-based approach isn’t always within your control. As schools and settings design their curriculum, often this is prescriptive (and even sometimes top down.) This means that children MUST be taught about minibeasts in Reception as in Year One they will learn about habitats and need the knowledge from Reception to build this new learning on top of.

Where practitioners can choose their topics, this isn’t always well thought out. Some practitioners even go so far as to choose topics based on the availability of teaching resources for each topic. E.g. picking a topic because twinkl happens to have lots to support it.

So, what is the best approach?

This is subjective but topic-based teaching long term is incompatible with a Purposeful Provision. It just doesn’t provide a sufficiently personalised approach for your learners. Next term I will post about a hybrid approach but for now I suggest that if you follow a topic-based approach that you build in opportunities for child-led learning. Listen carefully to their interests and bring some of these things in where possible

 Immersive topics

Before we look at enhancing based on topics let’s just address the concept of ‘immersive topics.’ This is hardly practiced now but like with many old-fashioned teaching methods it just won’t die.

An immersive topic is where EVERYTHING is linked back to the topic being studied. In a minibeast topic all maths work is linked to minibeasts, in the sand area you must build a habitat for your minibeasts, the playdough area is only for making caterpillars etc. Your number line, alphabet, coat peg cards etc all change to minibeast themed versions.

Immersive topics take up a huge amount of staff time and don’t produce better outcomes. If you still engage in immersive topics please reach out, I will try to support you to find ways to loosen this up.

Enhancing based on topics

Historically when you start a new topic you will change whole provision areas to reflect this new topic. Often this is done over a holiday to have it ready for the new term. Let’s stop that, ok?

I’m very big into ownership. If you do still need to change an entire area how about taking things down, packing them up and putting new items out WITH the children? This allows them to take some ownership of placement and understand why things are going out. And… why they are losing some of their old resources.

Enhancements for topics often replace all resources on a shelving unit. You should be keeping out continuous resources all the time and any enhancements should supplement them. For example, a playdough area may receive some minibeast themed playdough mats* but you would keep the rolling pins (continuous resource).

This approach of changing everything if often seen in roleplay areas such as creating a shop, bakery, post office etc. This isn’t ideal but it’s complex so we’ll address that in the future.

If you do need to enhance based on your topics, I suggest you consider the exploration aspect here. Any new resources placed out may be far removed from what they are used to. Do you need to put out all of the resources from the topic box? Could you add it gradually as it makes sense to them? Perhaps as you directly teach about particular aspects of the topic.

I’m not a huge fan of topic-based enhancements but I’m a pragmatist and know that there are times when you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do. Spreading enhancements out and giving children freedom to go off in new directions is a great way to broaden your approach to encourage deeper learning.

* I HATE playdough mats. They’re very closed ended. We’ll address why these need burning in a later post. For now, you do you.