So what is it with Göbekli Tepe? Why travel all this way? Was it worth it?

From our base in  Şanlıurfa (see part 4) we headed out to Göbekli Tepe. What a place! It’s all to do with the advent of religion. It was always presumed that the move from hunter-gatherer societies to settled agriculture brought about religious beliefs. And then came Göbekli Tepe. Dated to 11000-12,500 years ago, this presents as the oldest religious site in the world. I know this: I came away with a hoodie that says as much under a picture of it. It is a series of circles of megalithic T-shaped pillars, stylised human figures aligned astronomically and decorated in high and low-relief carvings. It was buried deliberately and archaeologists have been able to carbon-date organic material from the spoil, as well as from charcoal remains of a fire under one of the collapsed pillars. But here’s the thing: this provides a date for when the site was buried, not when it was built. Even this predates the date given for the pyramids of Giza by some 5000 years, and Stonehenge by 7000 years. There are marble-smooth plinths and the far more crude walls between some of the pillars cover some of the reliefs so are obviously of a later date than the megaliths. These walls must have been in place when the site was buried. So how much older than the wall-builders are the T pillars?

This is where writers such as Graham Hancock come in to the story. He questioned the archaeologists. How did the knowledge of the technology arise to build such a monument? Surely it didn’t just quickly appear along with complex knowledge of the movement of the stars, in a few hundred years in a hunter-gatherer society. And for such questions Graham Hancock was viciously attacked, banned from visiting the pyramids, branded a ‘psudo-scientist’ (he himself only claims to be a journalist) and some his material was taken down. When you see the marble-smooth finish on the plinths, which are at the very least 11000-12,500 years old; when you see the size of the stones that were shifted; then you have to wonder what sort of technology the builders had, where it came from and how long it took to develop? Graham Hancock’s idea is that there was an advanced, lost civilisation which flourished before the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis is about a cometary impact about 11,900 years ago that would have created wildfires and produced the black mat, a dark layer of strata rich in nano diamonds (produced in incredible heat not naturally found on Earth) leading to mass extinction of megafauna and initiating a reorganisation of human populations across the Northern Hemisphere.

And then we come to the carvings found on the stones. One is a sort of handbag shape. This representation has been found in depictions made by the Sumerians of Iraq, in the ruins of ancient Turkish temples, in decorations of the Maori of New Zealand, and in crafts made by the Olmecs of Central America. 

The stylised representations of humans of the pillars as well as other similar carvings have been found on Easter Island, in Bolivia (Tiwanaku), Azerbaijan (Gobustan), Tahiti, Marquesas Islands, Colombia (San Augustine), Egypt, and Costa Rica.  In other words, there is strong evidence of similarities that suggest the possibility of a common precursor to world-wide cultures in existence before 12,500 ago. Possible? If true, then a cometary impact could have wiped them almost entirely from the face of the earth. Only a few survivors could have passed on the technology required to build such sites as Göbekli Tepe.

A visit to Göbekli Tepe will send you away with more questions than answers about the mysteries of the ancient world. So it’s your call now. Was it worth the journey to see this for ourselves? Leave a comment – I’d love to know what you think.

Read the final part of the quest here.

Our first stop on the road trip is Karaman, where we find ourselves on the ninth floor of a rather smart hotel with a spa (which didn’t work) and a swimming pool in the basement. It sticks out as one of only a handful of high-rise buildings in Karaman. We have a panoramic view of the city from our room and manage to work out the etiquette of roundabouts from up here. We can clearly see that cars on the roundabouts are giving way to cars coming on. So that was a useful tip.

The restaurant is on the tenth floor. A very smartly besuited Maître d’ is obviously the one in charge around here. At his elbow trots a remarkably young-looking waitress, following his every move like some starstruck, puppy-eyed disciple. She looked terrified. He marched up to our table and declared that this girl had just started today and wanted to learn English, so he was showing her how it was done. He has a small greying beard and what appears to be a minimally and badly-disguised jet-black toupé… how can I say it… let’s go with ‘perched’ on the top of his head. I wanted to yank it off, I can’t deny it, if only to make that poor, petrified child crack a smile and relax a bit. He tells us that he is a retired firefighter, recently returned from the earthquake zone where he volunteered his services without asking for any pay. Then he asked us what we did for a living.

Back on the road the next morning, we make a small detour to visit Manazan Caves. Dating back to the Byzantine era, the 6^th to 7^th centuries, these caves were once homes, temples and store houses. They are still used for storing grains by the inhabitants of Taşkale village just up the road, where we visited the newer 800-year-old granaries, also carved into a limestone cliff face, and secured with juniper wood doors. They are about 50cm across, and the granary caves provide the perfect temperature and humidity to store grains for many years. Some of them are quite high up and are accessed using foot and hand-hole niches in the cliff. Some are even used as living spaces.

In Taşkale, a man approaches us as we are looking up at the doors in the rock.

“Do you remember me? I am the waiter in the hotel in Karaman.” Well, blow me down with a feather! If it isn’t wiggy, but this time dressed more like a shepherd than a Maître d’.  But he does have his firefighter’s jacket with him, which is perfect for the snowy winters here he assures us.

“This is my shop. Can I offer you some çay?” he asks, unlocking the padlock to the low stone building behind him. He also has a caravan opposite, which he runs as a snack bar for when tourists visit. In addition, Hassan keeps bees and hopes to develop his business into an international carpet emporium online and to travel the world. But he needs to get electricity to his shop first and that costs money he hasn’t got. He travels for a 100km round trip on his motorbike two days a week to work in the hotel, where he is also the Head of Security. All for TL50 (about £20) a session. He finished at 2 a.m. last night. His final duty of the shift was to search the bags and persons of the restaurant/bar staff for pilfered cutlery or items of unused food. They even try to deposit these in bins to collect later but he is wise to that. His boss, however, allows him to take the unused bread to feed to his dogs he tells us, tossing a few tasty, stale rolls out of the door from the large paper sack he has in his shop. 

Hassan is an interesting guy to chat with. He started learning English at the age of 12 when he ran his own shoeshine ‘business’ outside the American airbase in Adana. This is how he taught himself the language, asking the airbase staff, “What is this?” and writing the words down on his hand to practise later until he remembered them. It could have been that he just wanted to practise his English or maybe it was because we just got along swimmingly and enjoyed a conversation, but he didn’t even try to sell us any carpets (although I did buy a little trinket from him and gave him about four times the marked price for it). He tells us about the quality of his thick rugs: carpets that you could sleep on in comfort. And then the thinner ones that would give you back ache if you tried this. Finally, the scratchy, course ones, designed to keep snakes and scorpions out. Hassan’s grandfather also told him that snakes and scorpions hate the colour blue. In the daylight, I think I may have misjudged Hassan. The toupé could actually be low-quality hair-dye. It doesn’t matter really. He seemed like a nice enough chap to me. Hassan tells us that sometimes guests in the hotel behave badly. Like the drunk woman a couple of weeks ago who offered him $100 to give her some very personal services. After looking her up and down, he asked for $200. “No!” she told him, looking him up and down, “300!” And so the deal was struck and he continued by giving us far more detail than we would have liked, involving some punching out of the cheek with the tongue in rhythmic synchronicity with accompanying fist gestures. “It is the only time I ever cheated on my wife,” Hassan assures us, putting his hand on his heart for emphasis.

“Hassan”, (Maître d’, Head of Security, Firefighter, Snack Bar Owner, Carpet Salesman, Shopkeeper, Beekeeper, Farmer, Prostitute and Pimp — he also rented out his granary in the cliff and his shop for amorous youngsters)…” I hope you bought your wife a really nice present with that $300,” I tell him. Hassan seems to like this idea. But from the look on his face, I figured he’d already spent this money on something else.

We make it to Gaziantep that evening, a spit away from our goal of Şanlıurfa.  En route is our final sight-stop at Rumkale Terrace overlooking a stunning horseshoe bend on the sublime river Euphrates. There are boats moored by a floating pier, but all the stalls and cafes are closed because part of the jetty has crumbled away into the river as a result of the earthquake. It has the atmosphere of a ghost-town. Sticking out from the high cliff, is a glass-floored terrace. Up there is a café and it’s a great place to sit and people-watch as new arrivals show their unique reactions to a quite surreal experience. You look down between your feet to the jetty and river way, way below through the glass floor. And if you are afraid of heights, like I am, then you have to overcome this to get to the waist-high glass wall at the end where the perfect photo is to be had. Some people clung to the glass wall at the edge as they stepped timidly towards the far end. I tried this, but it didn’t work for me. In the end, I favoured looking straight towards the mountains and ruined castle on the opposite bank and walking directly ahead in quite a fierce way, ignoring the whole thing until I got to where I wanted to be. Then I tried to look relaxed for Stu to take a photo while I virtually dented the steel rail in a vice-like, one-handed grip.

I get chatting to the guy in the café who asks where we are from. “England,” I tell him.

“Where in England?”

“Oh, the southwest.”

“Do you know cushty?” he asks. I think that maybe this could be some place in Lincolnshire, or Cheshire, or Shropshire that I would never have heard of. “Cushty?”

“Yes. In London. Cushty.” And then the penny drops. Orhan is talking cockney.

“How on earth did you learn cockney?”

“I worked in Greece as chef in a hotel for Thompson Holidays and these people from London, they told me this.”

“Amazing,” I smile. “Are you serving food today, Orhan?”                                                                                                                                       

“Yes,” he replies. “We have chicken or troite.”

“Troite?”

“Yes, troite. You know. Fish”

“Ah, trout!”

“Yes, troite.”

“Orhan, is the… er… ‘troite’ cushty?”

“Yes, yes, it is cushty troite,” he laughs.

“Well I’ll have a cushty troite then, please.”

“And I’ll have the cushty troite as well,” concurs Stu.

And very nice it was too!

Read Part 3 of the quest to Göbekli Tepe here.

A Quest

When Tash suggested that I could take advantage of being able to take a trip out of school holiday times (when they are significantly cheaper) now that I have given up teaching, I didn’t need asking twice. I knew exactly where I wanted to go. It was a sort of quest. I asked my oldest friend from our time at Kingston Polytechnic many moons ago if he wanted to come with me. And so the quest to Göbeklitepe (‘potbelly hill’) was born.

Stu and I had both followed and read all of Graham Hancock’s books and wanted to see this enigmatic mystery for ourselves. It is a rewriter of history, an archaeological game-changer and something of a hot topic of ‘debate’ (I will explain the use of inverted commas later). So we flew to Antalya, in Southern Turkey on the Mediterranean coast, to begin what was to become a 3,200km (2000 mile) road trip out to south eastern Turkey. We could have flown to Istanbul and then taken an internal flight to Şanlıurfa. But a road trip gave us the chance to see a bit more of a country so richly blessed with ancient sites, to eat like the locals (what a treat that was) and see something of the amazing scenery away from the beach clubs, all-inclusive resorts and holiday complexes of the south coast. And what amazing scenery we saw along the way:

We took three nights in Antalya, staying in a narrow street in the old town, with its pantile-rooved houses and maze of narrow covered streets rammed with trinket shops, cafes and boutique hotels. You get a great meze breakfast and a warm welcome here. There’s a Roman harbour down at the bottom of the old town and our room was a sort of annexe to the main hotel, with a separate door into the room giving straight out onto the street. Other rooms were accessed through the main entrance off the pleasant, shady courtyard/bar/restaurant out back. Being in a room whose door opened directly on to the street made it quite noisy with regard to late-night/early morning revellers returning from bars. And then there was occasional motorbike or car noise. Cars had to slip very carefully between the buildings on streets that were certainly not designed for them. And then there was the upstairs neighbours, who made a bit of a habit of stamping around on the floorboards at two o’clock in the morning each night. We never found out why. Isaac, the man in the rather unimaginatively-named shoe shop opposite (“Shoes”), told us that they should never have made a room there, opening straight on to the street and to stick our heads out of the door if people were being too noisy – everybody would know what we meant.

Bulent

In the courtyard over a beer, we get chatting to Bulent, a German-Turk who used to play football in the second tier in Germany for a club in Bavaria. He is married to a Russian and runs his own business in Russia and Ukraine. He complains about how expensive the Maldives are nowadays and summons the waiter to get him to go out and pick up his prescription from a pharmacy. The waiter delegates this to a lower-ranking Filipino colleague, who dutifully scuttles off on the errand. A short while later, Bulent finds he needs some cigarettes and calls the waiter over again. The process is repeated, but this time the hapless Filipino has to check in with a photo to ensure he is getting the exact brand required.

That evening, Bulent is somehow involved with a large family party for which all the tables on the terrace have now been arranged into a large horseshoe shape. This added thumping Turkish music to the late-night soundscape. I didn’t really mind. I can easily sleep through most things. Plus, I am British, so don’t like to make a fuss. Isaac gives us a knowingly sympathetic look the next morning and suggests a visit to Butterfly Valley, about an hour away from here, where you can camp in bell tents on an idyllic beach. It does look amazing from the photos of his last visit on his phone and we needed to sort out accommodation for our last night in Turkey anyway, so we gratefully followed up his tip via Air B&B.

Feeling Like a Crusty

Isaac is nice to us, in that he treats us more like neighbours, never hassling us to buy anything, but always ready for a chat. We stayed in Antalya for three days to give us a chance to acclimatise and start to get used to the driving here and this morning we are to pick up a hire car at the airport.

Having booked a transfer from the airport to the hotel which never turned up (thanks, Booking.com), I was expecting trouble with this car pick-up too. I was right. But it started off reasonably enough. We took a tram out to the airport. A young teenage girl got up and offered me her seat. Shit, am I really that old? This really has never ever happened to me up until now. I mean, I’ve seen those signs on public transport before (‘Please give up this seat if an elderly or disabled person needs it’)… but have I really become one of those? I feel even older when, after the hire car contact didn’t turn up, I had to buy a Turkish SIM card to phone the company. I have no idea how to change the SIM card but the young’un in the (very expensive) Vodaphone booth at the airport soon had it all sorted for me. One of those times when you realise that you’ve forgotten something vital on this trip: in this case my fourteen-year-old daughter, Iona. She’d have known what to do and how to do it.

So eventually I managed to phone the hire car company, which is how I discovered that there is another terminal and we should be meeting them there. But they were not there either and it took a few more messages back and forth to sort it all out and finally pick up the car.

Then, we brave the city traffic and go on a sub-quest to find our way back to somewhere close to our hotel and then to find somewhere to park our new bestie: a slightly scratched Renault automatic with air conditioning that would come in handy when the temperatures would later get up to 44 degrees Celsius. One more night here, then the road trip begins… I drift off to sleep musing on the thought that next time I am on public transport I will certainly make a point of offering my seat to someone older than me, even if they have one already.

Besties and New Bestie: The Questie Begins

Read Part 2 of this travel, where the road trip begins, here.

It takes five trains, three boats and four planes to get from Totnes to Thailand and back. In Phuket, the power lines hang down low over the streets like charred spaghetti. Their guitar string coils hang hopefully expectant from telegraph poles.

Mr. Manop weaves in and out of slower vehicles, assiduously sticking to above the speed limit in his air-conditioned taxi. Things are cheaper here than out on the Krabi Islands.

It takes one hour and four Honda 250cc engines to get over to Phi Phi on a speed boat. The islands are inhabited by 4700 people and the population gets three thousand times bigger than that over the course of a year when the (mostly young twenty-something) back-packers arrive. They come for the warm climate, water play and abundant weed stores. Imagine my surprise when virtually the first thing we come across on arrival is a sign for a pizza restaurant surrounded by some pot plants on the street to remind them where to go when they get the munchies. The boat tour of the islands takes in sea caves, the James Bond island (from “The Man With the Golden Gun”), Maya beach, Monkey Island, some damn fine cliffs and equally damn fine snorkelling of the reefs.

Some places get crowded, especially when the day-trippers arrive from Phuket. But if you choose the back way up to the view point it is quiet. There is a ‘bar’ in the jungle on the climb up and it’s empty. When you get up there to the view point, it is far from empty. The bar owner laments his crash since the pandemic. But the crowds don’t deter the keen adders-of-photos-to-social-media who can still make it look like a deserted idyllic beach and point their phones at 90 degrees from the crowds and out to sea away from the rammed beach just next to them. It is chilling to think of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami that hit the islands from both sides and killed an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries. I think of that when the ladies are off for a swim and I go back to the room for a shower. Afterwards, whilst waiting for them to return, I enjoy the mosque-call drifting through the trees and notice the Tsunami warning siren of the roof of the hotel.

Sheer cliffs, cocktails and breakfast views of perfect turquoise water. Even a vegan/vege restaurant. A school where you don’t have to warn your children to watch out crossing the road. There are no cars on Phi Phi anyway and the cart-pushers shout “beep-beep” to warn you if you are in their way. The school gates give out straight onto the the beach and after school some of the children hang out by the long-tailed boats to see what’s going on.

I liked Phi Phi, when you could escape to somewhere quiet.

A night in Singapore on the way back. Fabulous views from the top of Sands Sky Park, the impressive Gardens by the Bay and lots of excessive fines’ notices for smoking in the wrong place, crossing the road in the wrong place, littering, and pretty much anything you could think of… breathing out too much CO², not shopping in the malls enough, bringing in chewing gum or nicotine-replacement products, looking like you have just come from Thailand, eating or drinking on the subway. Or you could be thrown in jail, or birched for some of the aforementioned offences (most of which are true). But it is clean, modern, Garden City-ey, with an airport so efficient we didn’t have to queue even once (Heathrow take note, with the army doing the immigration officers’ jobs nowadays) even for the Butterfly Garden in Terminal 2. Think of a Germany or Switzerland of Asia (things work and are prosperous, efficient and clean). I think I’m a bit too dirty and crusty for Singapore, but my daughter wants to live there because all of those rules made her feel secure and the indoor fountains, tropical trees and designer shops in the malls hit the spot for her.

So there you have it. Five trains, three boats and four planes for a ten-day 50^th birthday trip (Tash’s) and to chase away this hard winter and the seasonally affected disorder we all suffer from. Just ten days? It seemed a lot longer than that and it will take a lot longer than that to pay off the credit card. Worth it? Well, hell yeh! After all, ‘You Only Live Twice’.

Slideshow of all photos (includes ones not already shown above):

I learnt today that Keith, who used to live in a caravan abandoned up the top of our road, has been living under a pile of pallets and a tarp in a dead-end lane hidden behind a hedge up there these past few mean, icy months.  

Someone took him Christmas dinner when he was in that ramshackle caravan one year.  Other people complained bitterly that he was responsible for lowering the prices they would hope for on their house sales and that he was inviting an onslaught of travellers to invade the area.

In summer, Keith would sleep in the woods sometimes. But Keith is just a human who struggles with life. I struggle with the air frier my wife got for Christmas.   

Now Keith has been put in a house and people are debating who actually owns that land, the dead-end track behind the hedge, and so is responsible for the debris he left behind. I bet he’ll be sleeping back in the woods come summer.

I am not into New Year Resolutions. However, this is quite interesting. Fill in the above (Do/Think/Feel) and just see where it may take you.

DO

I want to visit the ancient sites to do with the theories of Graham Hancock about an ancient forgotten episode or two of human history. I’ve followed him and read his books for decades and think he has a good point to make. I would like to visit Easter Island, Gobekli Tepi, Cappadocia, Machu Pichu, Angkor Wat and Lake Titicaca. At least a year’s worth of travel if you hurried a bit. Not much to ask for in the time I have left, but I want to judge the connections between ancient civilisations for myself, with my own eyes.

THINK

I do not accept any sort of idea of a fall from grace of humankind. Any promises made, forfeits incurred or falls from grace are not my own personal fault (reincarnations notwithstanding). So I am free to choose what I do without any guilt. My choices will make or break me. I hope for the former.

“I think, therefore I am… but I still think I don’t exist” – DesPeteCartes

FEEL

What one feels on the inside is so often opposite to what is projected on the outside. If that is true for me, then I should not be so hasty in judging others.

Three simple words. DO, THINK, FEEL. Where will they take you in 2023? I’d love to know and find out. Please post your response.

Here is a lovely gift for you.

9 Ways to Make the Most of Cross Curricular Opportunities in Modern Foreign Languages Teaching – No Disadvantages

 6 min (+ optional videos)

What relevance does learning in one subject have to others? Or any other part of a child’s life, come to that? Chopping up a school day into isolated subject blocks is enough to make you think that one area of study has little (if anything) to do with the others. If the information we pick up in one ‘block’ seems to have no other use outside of this, then why should we bother learning it at all? Fortunately, there’s a better way. I’d like to think of it as the cheese board of teaching. But then again, as a cheese-lover, I would do, wouldn’t I? 

MFL is a fantastic subject for cross curricular opportunities. 

If you’re not convinced, then read on to find some fabulous ways you can take full advantage of these. And if you don’t need convincing, then read on too!  You’ll love the fun ideas shared here. 

Sign up now to Twinkl for FREE Twinkl resources

Start ‘Em Young!

OK, so it’s not officially part of the KS1 curriculum, but why not introduce foreign languages early on? Learning about, say colours, or body parts, or numbers in a new language can be fun! I’ve seen some grand work on this in PE lessons.

It’s also being taken up as part of teacher training.

And then we get to KS2. You can start with the topic. Let’s stick to colours, body parts and numbers for now – we’ve got those covered. Those links will take you to French resources, but they are also available in Spanish or German too.

But then, after some teaching here, why not recap by ditching English in your PE lessons for a bit?

Keep it Real

Anyway, let’s get back to the cheese, as promised. Or food in general, come to that. It always hits the spot with young learners when there’s a snack involved. I’m talking about a FRENCH CAFÉ. Apart from the opportunity for children to interact in French, they can take advantage of the opportunity to prepare bills, create menus, posters, labels and bunting or research some ambient music. You can involve the whole school community. Here are some top tips and tricks:

• Make a café serving a simple French breakfast (keep it simple – coffee, orange juice and croissant for example) or lunch (crêpes, sandwiches, including cheese, of course!) for the whole school community – children, teaching staff, parents, relatives, governors.
• Children could act as French speaking waiters and waitresses. 
• Staff or parents could prepare and serve the food and drink for the waiters and waitresses. 

Tips:

• Most supermarkets have a Community Champion. You may be able to take advantage of this to source food for free from there.
• Practise the French to be spoken by the waiters and waitresses in advance.
• Practise with the rest of the school community how to order in French.
• Waiters and waitresses will need to be aware of hygiene and safety issues. 
• Carry out a risk assessment. 
• Ask an adult or confident child to seat and greet ‘customers’.
• Children can act as cashiers using knowledge of numbers.
• Ask for volunteers to wash up. 
• Ask the children to wear black and white – bow ties would be perfect!
• Put out an advert on social media, or if you’re lucky enough to have a Music Service, try to find an accordion player. 
• If you can get hold of some cafetieres, that would complete a truly multisensory experience.

Can’t you almost smell those coffees and croissants?

Or how about learning some new words by checking out menus in a different language online? English-French dictionaries at the ready… Here’s a starter for ten: https://www.dominos.fr/la-carte 

Cross Curricular Hitch Hiking

Twinkl’s mission is a simple one: we help those who teach. So when it comes to cross curricular language teaching, we’d certainly pick up a hitch hiker. 

Did you know that you can request a resource from us? 

So why not save yourself some planning time? You don’t have to make resources for cross  curricular teaching. We have a whole team of teachers, designers, illustrators and editors that will do that for you. Give us as much detail as you can about what you want and leave the rest to us!

Simply navigate to any of our resources and scroll down a bit.

Give Festivals an Extra Little Cross Curricular Fizz

Festivals could have been designed especially for cross-curricular teaching. And they get you right inside a culture. There are so many cracking resources to help you with this. 

All Souls’ Day, meet El Dia de los Muertos.             Christmas, meet La Navidad.

And let’s not forget the opportunities in celebrating the European Day of Languages. It’s great for data collection tasks from bar charts to pie charts (languages spoken in school, in European countries etc…). Or why not cost up a weekend away? 

A Day in the Cross Curricular Life

Organising a day around the language you teach can be fun for everyone. You can involve your feeder schools’ language departments. And you can bet your bottom dollar there’ll be a lot of cross curricular activities going on. 

A Very Cunning Cross Curricular Plan

This black adder has its own cunning plan

If you’re mapping out the learning for the whole school, then get to know the topics being taught. Make them part of your language planning. This is a great example. 

 If You’d Care to Step Outside… In a Cross Curricular Way

At the Top of Your Cross Curricular Game

Lots of the games onsite at Twinkl encourage maths skills or are theme-based. 

With the upcoming Men’s World Cup there are sure to be many keen young footballers who would love to get their teeth (or feet) into these resources.

Whether it’s a quiz, or an all action whole-class game, languages cosy up well to PE, Maths, environmental or cultural education and a whole host of others. And that’s the way it should be. 

Cross Curricular Upgrades

The Planit Schemes of work are theme-based units which cover a whole range of cross curricular topics. 

Interactive online games are fabulous for engaging cross-curricular language learning. 

And Finally

Cross curricular teaching helps students to make connections. It gives more meaning to the subjects and skills they’re learning. You can begin to show them that the things they’re learning do mean something beyond an isolated classroom. 

French President Charles de Gaulle once asked, “How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?” I doubt he’d tried to find out which ones went perfectly together. But we know better, don’t we? It’s all about making connections. 

And cheese.

Thanks for reading. 

Read More:

I love it when my clothes smell of smoke, like they do tonight, but thought wildfires were in mainland Europe… until the farmer’s field 100 yards away caught fire at about 4pm this afternoon. Ye olde good neighbours of the street went out with buckets and wheelie-bins full of water – even hoses for those closer – whilst our next-door neighbour’s son went out with a can of cider. “I don’t think you’ll put it out with that Sam,” I said, “But we sure do appreciate the sacrifice.” Meanwhile, the fire engine had turned up at the bottom of the field. Luckily the wind blew it downhill towards the river where the said fire engine was doing its thing, and another fire engine shortly turned up in our road and went up and down for the next four hours to the water supply in a hole (one of those square-shaped covers in the roadway) at the other end of our street. And who doesn’t enjoy watching firefighters through the window? Don’t answer that! I make light of it, but with a different wind direction, we could all have been that farmer’s field.