Whole School Topic
Whole School Topic 2025
The Medieval period laid the foundations for many aspects of British society today — from our legal systems to our monarchy and local governance. Learning about this time will help children understand how the past has shaped the present. To ensure we develop a well-rounded, inclusive view of the past — one that recognises the richness of human history across continents, we will include the following themes;
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Medieval Britain and the world; While Medieval Britain is a key topic, exploring this period globally helps children see that important developments were happening all over the world — from science and medicine in the Islamic world to art and trade in Africa and Asia.
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Building Global Awareness; Learning about a range of civilisations will show how history is interconnected. Showing how ideas, inventions, and cultures influence each other, laying the foundations for the modern, global world we live in.
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Celebrating Diversity; Exploring the ranges of beliefs from the past, helping us to appreciate how culture, religion, and power have influenced society over time. Encouraging us all to develop our values of respect, curiosity, and open-mindedness toward people of different backgrounds.
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Making Meaningful Comparisons; we will also compare different societies and time periods — e.g. how kings ruled in England versus how emperors ruled in China. Deepening our understanding of themes like power, religion, and daily life.
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Sustainable living then and now; Investigating how people then grew their own food, Reused and repaired clothes, tools, and furniture because all things were repaired, reused, or passed on, not thrown away. Food and goods came from nearby, not from far away. Natural materials: Houses, tools, and everyday items were made from wood, straw, wool, and stone – not plastic!
Along with these, key themes will also include cross curricular learning, for example through Myths and Legends in English, illuminated manuscripts, heraldry in Art, studying maps, land use and changing landscapes in Geography, and more — enriching their overall learning. Our Golden thread, crossing all 5 weeks, will be around castles, forts and palaces around the world. In addition to this we will be making links to House Thinkers, Habits of Mind, British Values and UNICEF articles, our school values across the weeks.
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Week 1: Respect- ‘Welcome to Hillcross Castle’ - the importance of castles across the world and who lived there.
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Week 2: Responsibility- ‘Where in the World?’ - Castles, palaces and forts across the world, how they were built and their purpose & how they were sustainable- farming, living.
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Week 3: Challenge/Courage- ‘Brave Knights and Fearful Dragons’- Fact and Fiction, how they were defended
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Week 4: Aspiration-’Who is in charge?’ - the hierarchy-monarchy and justice system
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Week 5: Compassion- ‘Let us entertain you’ - life in medieval times, Art, music and sports.
Weekly themes such as castles, knights, battles, and medieval life will naturally capture the children’s imagination, and we will enhance this further through our use of stories, artefacts, role-play, and workshops to make learning vivid and memorable.
Whole School Topic Awards
As with every WST, we will be voting for and then awarding our Annual WST awards. The awards event will take place on Monday 7th July during the school day. This event will include a presentation of awards and prizes that individuals, teams and Year Groups have won. Photographs of the winners will be available for families to see in the final newsletter of the school year. To match the theme of our topic, we will be encouraging children to reuse their costumes from Launch day on this day as well.We will also be announcing the winners of our Family Competition on this day too.
