Week 31: Crossing Boundaries and Creating Connections

When I review my interdisciplinary connection map I have included an area of experts in their field.  These people are regularly called upon to reinforce my understanding of the units I am teaching, especially in te reo Maori.  Our junior syndicate have been planning with a new leader this year and for the first time we have been able to consider units of work that our students have shown an interest in so long as we were covering the all or most curriculum areas in our long term plan.  We have made joint decisions about the units we plan.  After three terms of experimenting with units and realising they were very disjointed we linked our units this term so they flow and can be taught through other curriculum areas.  The most frequent method of implementing integrated, interdisciplinary instruction is the thematic unit in which a common theme is developed and addressed in more than one content area.”  (Lipson, Valencia, Wixon & Peters, 1993)  In order for this to work effectively units need to focus on a theme that takes into account the needs and interests of the students.  When working collaboratively to plan integrated units, “children have to learn something worth knowing” and the connections made across curriculums must be logical, keeping in mind that the learning experiences are “supporting learning, growth and discovery.”  (Barton K., & Smith L., 2000)  They continue by giving an example of a unit on apples and how topics can be covered with junior students that are meaningful, support learning and discovery. The integrated unit “should cover topics like the life cycle of a plant, the production and distribution of food or human nutritional needs.  They continue to impress upon teachers that the integrated units need to be “flexible, organised and authentic.  Over planning is better than under planning and having a variety of activities and resources means you can accommodate student interest.” To me this is 21^st century learning.  This reading has made me enthusiastic to share the knowledge and ideas with my syndicate and incorporate meaningful contexts for learning as this term we touched on the basics of a theme and with interdisciplinary support we can really achieve this.  I can’t wait to share this and put it into practice next year.

I have two goals to work on with my interdisciplinary connections and they are to use the skills of experts in their field and include the community more in our learning as most of the parents do have an interest in their students learning. Making connections with these people will support my learning and deeper understanding of topics and ultimately improve my teaching practice and my students learning.

   

References

Source: Barton, K. C., & Smith, L. A. (2000). Themes or motifs? Aiming for coherence through interdisciplinary outlines. The Reading Teacher, 54(1), 54-63.1.

Lipson, M. Y., Valencia, S.W., Wixon, K. K., & Peters, C.W., (1993) Integration and thematic teaching: integration to improve teaching and learning. Language Arts, 70, 252 – 263 cited in Barton, K. C., & Smith, L. A. (2000). Themes or motifs? Aiming for coherence through interdisciplinary outlines. The Reading Teacher, 54(1), 54-63.1.