Integrated Curriculum

Middle school education has fallen under scrutiny in recent years, as parents, politicians and educational professionals alike have argued over how to create effective learning environments and strategies for students. One such strategy that exists is integrated curriculum. Since the time of its inception, the strategy has only been used primarily as a periodical unit within schools, and not as a school wide endeavor. Although many strategies have been proven effective, integrated curriculum has been shown to be effective while also creating more student interest in the various topics being taught, and should be considered as a strategy to be used much more than it currently is.

In order to understand the effectiveness of integrated curriculum strategies, it is important to understand what integrated curriculum is. In short, integrated curriculum takes various parts of curriculum and applies these aspects to multiple subject areas. This allows students to gain multiple perspectives and learn without being limited to a single subject at one time. This also allows students who may have difficulties in one subject area or simply have a distaste in that subject to gain appreciation of a topic or the subject area when they otherwise would not.

The process for creating integrated curriculum units can be very simple. The unit simply takes a single topic of study(the Iditarod, for example) and uses unit and lesson formats from all educators involved to teach the topic from each subject point of view. A great resource is this article on designing integrated curriculum units. To sum up the article, it gives great ideas on various ways to instruct with various teachers, and shows that creating a system with integrated curriculum is very similar to creating a common unit for a class. By devising an essential question, sub questions, and finishing with a project to demonstrate learning, teachers generally won't need to change the way they formulate units. The only difference is the coordinated effort in which teachers will have to work in order to keep their lessons based toward the topic at hand.

When put into motion, integrated curriculum can create fantastic and new experiences for students, and is often a refreshing change of pace from the learning they have become accustomed to. One school, The Sharon Academy in Sharon Vermont, shows a variation on the practice that they have used in their middle school that has shown to be fairly successful. Personally, I have been a student who worked in this system during one unit in middle school. The unit was so successful that it was common for older students and siblings to talk to younger students about how much they enjoyed the unit and that the younger students should look forward to when the unit came. The unit gave us the opportunity to engage more with the topic we studied(which was the Iditarod) and brought much higher curiosity in a topic and in subjects that otherwise would have been brushed over. Another great resource showing success in other schools as well as other styles of teaching integrated curriculum can be found in this ASCD article on the subject.

Integrated curriculum learning is a simple way to create a more unique and often more successful learning experience for students. By simply creating a new outlet for students to use various subject to view the world around them, they can begin to see more creatively and find new paths they didn't know existed. It is my hope that in the future I can persuade my fellow educators into using this system to create a great learning experience for students that I will have the privilege of teaching.


If you wish to read more into the subject of teaching with integrated curriculums, I have included my annotated bibliography in the link provided.

Family Involvement and Epstein's Framework

Epstein's framework for family involvement includes 6 ways for effective involvement to take place with schools. One of the most vital components is communication. Communication can be engaged through conferences with parents, providing clear information through class or team websites, report cards, and other forms and communication established between teachers and parents. Challenges could come from language barriers that would have to be solved, and making sure communication links are clear and direct with parents. By communicating this information, student can be aware of their progress, as can their parents. Parents also can understand school policies and any issues that may come up involving their child. As a future educator, I feel this is incredibly vital to act upon and to insure that good communication is established. A second major component is learning at home. This can be provided through activities that students and families can do outside the classroom to learn more on a subject, or by providing homework pieces to allow students to engage with subject matter outside the classroom. Challenges might include getting students to drive their own learning away from school, and bring in parents to help engage students with the subject as well away from school. However, if done correctly, students could gain more knowledge of the subject and gain interest in it as well, while parents could engage more with their children in their education. This would also allow for teachers to give parents the opportunity to teach their own children and give students multiple outlets for help and resources. Although as a future educator I wouldn't give too much homework to my students, I feel that spending personal time to discover more about a subject would be highly beneficial to students in any classroom.

Middle School Teaming

As I start to learn more about teaming in middle schools, I begin to see learning in a middle school setting from a different perspective. Since this is my first look at teaming as an educational approach to teaching and working with students, I'm curious to see how certain aspects of it work. For instance, how does teaming differ from school to school, and what pieces often remain the same throughout school districts? Obvious changes, such as the ratio of students to teachers, will remain different, but it will be interesting to see how advisory period times during the school day vary and the different ways the time will be used. From the sources I have read, it seems that as long as the main goal of the team is met (creating a sense of community and building academic success as a group), then the means to that end will vary from district to district.

Strong Advisory Programs

The biggest key to maintaining a strong advisory program is communication and trust in working together for a common goal. Students must trust in their teachers and parents to help them achieve the most they can and stay on task, while parents must trust teachers to steer their children in the right direction while at school, and teachers must trust parents and students to continue to work hard outside the classroom. Communication between the three is essential and builds this trust, allowing everyone to know what the goals and tasks are that will build towards the success looking to be achieved. Besides maintaining trust and communication, holding a sense of community, maintaining accountability, and being focused and on task are key pieces to a strong advisory program and team within a school. These pieces keep the people within the program close, successful, and develops everyone involved in a positive way through the experience.

Bangladesh Images

In my experience with my placement student from Bangladesh, multiple images came to my mind. The first came when I discovered her love of reading and books, which she would later tell me was a big part of the culture of her country. I also made the assumption that she would be connected to the religion of Hinduism or Islam, which I discovered was the later. I also found that her and her family still enjoyed eating traditional Indian food from time to time, showing again her family's connection to their original culture at home. These connections with her home are important for helping her remember who she is and where she comes from, especially while living in a country that is filled with such diversity in culture.

ELL Identity Comparison

Being able to understand a student's background and identity is imperative to being able to reach them as educators. I have written down in the document attached below similarities and differences between my ELL student, T, and myself, and have found multiple differences in our backgrounds that could affect the way we act in our everyday life. These differences need to be carefully observed to maintain progress and continue to build upon ever growing relationships between teachers and students.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wv5OMETeTg2DP0fE_Wcu-TqDVyiIdWdJ42WsaE7_hWw/edit?usp=sharing

ELL Student Speaking WIDA Level

Following the first few weeks of working with T, I've determined what I believe is her WIDA level in speaking. Out of the 5 possible levels, I have found she is a 4. I've determined this by using can-do descriptors and comparing them to our interactions and conversations that we have had. The level 4 speaking tier states that students should be able to take a stance and defend it, compare and contrast points of view, explain content related issues, and respond to slang. Level 5, however, states students should be able to engage in debates using technical language, give multimedia oral presentations, and explain metacognitive strategies for solving problems. During our meetings, T has created a pros and cons list between our two presidential candidates, and also discussed her reasoning for supporting one of the two for her own reasons. We have also held causal conversations on what we did over the past week, containing occasional slang or casual terms that was easy for T to discuss with. However, she is approaching level 5, as she has told me she presented multiple PowerPoint presentations for classes, but her ability to fully debate over a topic using high level vocabulary is not so direct. She engages in reading highly advanced books for an early high school student, specifically a Dan Brown novel, and in it keeps tabs on words she doesn't know so she can research what they mean and know exactly what the author is describing. This can in turn effect her ability to speak professionally in public and in debating topics and very high levels. By reviewing this, I can determine as an educator to focus on her development of vocabulary and academic language to assist in her oral and presentation skills.