The Curriculum for 7-11 year olds

`As more Daleks try to take over education, it is a pleasure to read books that help repel them. The 12 chapters in The Curriculum for 7-11 year olds offer a healthy antidote to the Dalek style of teaching′ - Times Educational Supplement

This book affirms that although literacy and numeracy are crucial, they are not the only important subjects in the curriculum for 7 to eleven year olds.

The authors believe that all children need a broad educational experience in these vital years of schooling. They put forward an approach to teaching and learning that embraces the diversity of ways in which individuals organize thought, communicate ideas, express feelings and engage in purposeful action.

Written by subject specialists with extensive experience of the curriculum for 7 -eleven year olds, each chapter deals with central issues of teaching and learning in a particular subject, demonstrating the essential nature of the subject and its particular contribution to the education of children in the later phase of primary education. All chapters focus on the dual concerns of subject content and subject application, and the first chapter discusses thinking and learning in the context of this stage of children′s development. The book will heighten teachers′ awareness of what is particular to a subject, and its potential contribution to children′s learning.

Jeni Riley is Head of School of Early Childhood and Primary Education at the Institute of Education, University of London.