Deep dive into themes at Wellington: The world at war

In many schools, lessons are taught as isolated blocks, focusing on key (yet separate) skills depending on the subject taught. However, at Wellington College International Hangzhou, we endeavour to further enrich and strengthen the learning of our pupils using a cross-curricular approach.

The benefits of this approach far outweigh the isolated method as more time can be used across the subjects to develop key skills and knowledge from the UK National Curriculum while constantly immersing the pupils in the key vocabulary taught which is essential for bilingual and second language learners.

In the second term of Year 5, we explored the learning question: What forces were in action during World War II? This provided us with the opportunity to not only explore the historical events of the second world war, but also to develop our own wartime narratives, explore number and place value using soldier and weaponry numbers, investigate the different cultures of the European countries involved in the war and explore the different forces and how they were used during famous battles such as Dunkirk.

This unique approach to teaching not only led to an abundance of high-quality work, but also increased the engagement and love of learning for all the pupils within the class. Many went on to explore further areas such as aircraft design within their own time outside of school and were keen to share with the class all the things they had learned.