What Is Integrated Curriculum? - 0 views
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Can making wind and rain machines improve the reading comprehension and writing scores of elementary students on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test? Do students really learn math by learning to clog dance? When students spend after-school time participating in a microsociety that reflects the roles of real life, will their test scores in math and reading improve?
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Lee claims that when she teaches science concepts she also teaches students to think and write in the structured, coherent ways required on standardized tests
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What exactly is integrated curriculum? In its simplest conception, it is about making connections. What kind of connections? Across disciplines? To real life? Are the connections skill-based or knowledge-based?
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we defined three approaches to integration—multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary
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When teachers integrate the subdisciplines within a subject area, they are using an intradisciplinary approach
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Through this integration, teachers expect students to understand the connections between the different subdisciplines and their relationship to the real world.
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In this approach to integration, teachers organize the curriculum around common learnings across disciplines. T
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ey chunk together the common learnings embedded in the disciplines to emphasize interdisciplinary skills and concepts.
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They are learning the interdisciplinary skill of communication (thinking and writing in a structured and coherent way).
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In the transdisciplinary approach to integration, teachers organize curriculum around student questions and concerns (see Figure 1.3). Students develop life skills as they apply interdisciplinary and disciplinary skills in a real-life context. Two routes lead to transdisciplinary integration: project-based learning and negotiating the curriculum
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Project-Based Learning. In project-based learning, students tackle a local problem. Some schools call this problem-based learning or place-based learning. According to Chard (1998), planning project-based curriculum involves three steps:
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Teachers and students select a topic of study based on student interests, curriculum standards, and local resources. The teacher finds out what the students already know and helps them generate questions to explore. The teacher also provides resources for students and opportunities to work in the field. Students share their work with others in a culminating activity. Students display the results of their exploration and review and evaluate the project.
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Negotiating the Curriculum. In this version of the transdisciplinary approach, student questions form the basis for curriculum.
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Studies of project-based programs show that students go far beyond the minimum effort, make connections among different subject areas to answer open-ended questions, retain what they have learned, apply learning to real-life problems, have fewer discipline problems, and have lower absenteeism
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The essential difference between the three approaches was the perceived degree of separation that existed between subject areas. Given our experiences at the time, both of us believed that the three approaches fit on an evolutionary continuum.
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suggests that even intradisciplinary projects should include math and literature/media to be rich and vibrant
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We believe that educators will continue to experience deepening connections as they become more experienced in this area.
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All knowledge interconnected and interdependent Many right answers Knowledge considered to be indeterminate and ambiguous