Designing Integrated Curriculum

In the video Designing Integrated Curriculum, teachers at a school in San Diego discuss their decision to integrated their curriculum in a project-based learning format.  While the teachers admit that planning for this kind of learning is much more difficult and time consuming than simply following published curriculum, there are many benefits to teaching in this way. 

The greatest benefit I see from this method is the real-life correlation of instruction.  When we face problems in our day to day life, they are not compartmentalized into subject-by-subject issues.  We don't get to say, "I'm working on Language Arts right now, so I can't do this math problem."  It is very common to come across a problem in which one has to utilize knowledge from a variety of content areas in order to tackle the issue at hand.

Another benefit of an interdisciplinary project is that it puts learning in the hands of students and sets them up to become life-long learners.  The focus of lessons is on student inquiry and what conclusions they can draw from their exploration.  The teacher is utilized as a guide or a resource, but is not the center of the lesson.  Again, this assists students with real-world problem solving skills by teaching them to go in search of answers they need and giving them the tools they need to find them.

As mentioned, planning this kind of learning is much more difficult than traditional teaching methods.  There is no guide to follow, so teachers must do their research and collaborate with one another to develop their lessons.  Schools must have a strong sense of teamwork in order to make the project work.  This will require more time and effort than it takes to follow a manual or teach to the test, but the difference it makes in student learning is worth it.

I think my school is tiptoeing the edge of adopting integrated curriculum for at least part of the time.  Last year, we began a different structure to our weeks in that on Monday through Thursday, teachers instructed from curriculum as usual, and on Fridays all classes participated in project-based learning.  Now, as I have discovered in taking EDTECH 542 this summer, the lessons that were being taught during that time were more of a thematic unit based lesson than true project based learning.  I think the first step that would need to be taken in adopting an integrated curriculum approach is informing staff of the difference between the two methods, and what exactly PBL is.  I have been working with my principal this summer and exploring the BIE website and its resources to hopefully start off this coming school year doing just that.