During my research on designing integrated curriculum, I found that there were many advantages to working across contents. As a secondary social studies teacher in a middle school, there was limited integration of curriculum this past year. At my previous high school I worked in collaboration with the English teacher on multiple projects to connect history and English. Our main project was the 9th grade research paper. Each student chose a history topic to research and they were graded in both classes. The English teacher worked with the students on grammar and research skills. As the history teacher I helped the students understand primary and secondary sources and how to chose a topic to research. The benefit was the overall understand the students had in both contents.
After watching the video clip on integrated curriculum, I am interested in the challenge of working across more content areas. Social studies and English tend to go hand-in-hand, but my hope is the possibilities history can have mixed with a science and math based project. I believe the biggest challenge educators face is how to work together on a single project, yet meet all the standards and curriculum set by the state. Some teachers are focused on just their content and to pull in social studies into science or math would take extensive planning. Depending on the grade level of that teacher it could influence what type of project that could work. Currently as a seventh grade teacher I focus mainly on the Eastern Hemisphere (Asia, Europe, Africa). The students are divided by math levels, which can also affect which science class they are in. Due to the variety of levels and courses, it would be important to find a common ground for all the students. Or, if possible, have varying math skills within the project so depending on the student's level they would complete a different mathematics segment.
I am looking forward to discussing this with my colleagues this fall. Even with adding in one other subject a year, the students could benefit from the overall understand that learning is across curriculum, not just limited to one subject. For example, in history class we discuss the impact of the Great Depression on the world and how it lead us into World War II. During my teachings we talk about inflation and the effects of the stock market crash. This would be a perfect connection into mathematics. Through a variety of an assignments and an cumulative project the outcome will impact the students overall understanding across the board.
References
Designing Integrated Curriculum |
Project Based Learning | BIE. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2016, from
http://bie.org/object/video/designing_integrated_curriculum
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