Hot topic?

After a discussion on our residential this week, and after reading a report in the TES, topic work is something on my mind.

The TES writes that their survey last year revealed that four out of five primaries are abandoning traditional teaching and reintroducing 'themed' lessons, which were popular in the 1970s and 1980s.

Researchers from Manchester University found that junior children in 2006 spent almost half their week in English and Maths lessons, and two hours on science. This leaves only an hour for each other subject.

They also found that the focus was shifting away from teaching traditional subjects separately towards a more combined approach in order to cover all aspects of the curriculum. English, they discovered, was being combined with other subjects, such as history, for four-fifths of the time.

Our school will be looking into revamping our curriculum by introducing more topic work. How do other people do this? Is every single lesson part of the topic, or are some subjects still taught discretely, like Maths for example? Any thoughts?