Curriculum Integration


To Integrate or Not to Integrate, 

That Is the Question

A look into benefits, criticisms, student motivation and
 incorporation of standards into integrated curriculum.


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“Curriculum integration facilitates the pursuit of new knowledge and meaning by transcending the disciplines of knowledge rather than abandoning them.”   —James A. Bean


Introduction

Education is ever evolving. As researchers are learning more about best practices and how to teach the child, classrooms are looking a bit different than they did even just a few years ago. So, what is the best practice? In the traditional approach to curriculum subjects are kept separate based on the philosophy that the purpose of education is to master facts, principles, and skills in a specific content area. Integrative curriculum involves combining traditionally separate subjects so that students can grasp a more authentic understanding.


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Benefits and Criticisms of Integrating Curriculum

Those in favor of integrated lessons believe that the mastering of facts is secondary to making curriculum meaningful through the integration of subject areas and problem-solving. The say curriculum should be based on issues, concerns, and problems from real life and units or themes should extend beyond separate subject areas for students to make connections across curricula. While critics have their own list of reason to oppose the idea as the proceeding shows. 


Curriculum Integration – Curriculum Essentials: A Journey (pressbooks.pub)

Implementing Intergrated Curriculum

With implementing any new practice there comes concerns. Some questions that are often raised are “Can science be a link for learning literacy and mathematics?” “Is it possible to include rich content and still keep an eye on the state assessment scores for students?” Yes, through proper professional development and synthesizing standards it can be done successfully! 

First scaffolding should be provided for teachers to cultivate new learning through tasks that allowed them to discover solutions as well as build their abilities to communicate with colleagues and encourage personal reflection on professional growth so that they might better serve as mentors and models to other educators.


Next, teachers should be shown how discrete content standards for science, literacy, and mathematics could be combined into a synthesized standard that would serve as the basis for curricular units integrating literacy and math within the context of elementary school science. They will begin to see the common concepts within the standards and that there are similarities in the objectives and goals across the standards. 

Here is an example on how to find similarities in Math, Science and ELA standards and synthesize them into a couple of standards that cover all the knowledge and skills across the subjects. 




Student Motivation


Now that the teachers are on board how can we engage students? Here are three fun and engaging strategies to use in integrated lessons.

Mysterious Possibilities

Mysterious Possibilities involved the teacher displaying a scientific photograph, object, or picture (with or without explanation). After studying the object, the students tried to solve the mystery by brainstorming or predicting possible connections to a specific topic. The teacher then had the class discuss the list of ideas that became a bridge to the new lesson (whole-class speaking, listening, and viewing).

Question of the Day

Question of the Day involved an open-ended question which the teacher (or student) wrote on the board to stimulate thinking and activate prior knowledge. One example was, “How are reading and space travel alike?” The students then discussed their answers orally, wrote in their learning logs, or drew pictures. This was followed by a sharing of answers and discussion (whole-class or small- group speaking, listening, viewing, writing, or visual representation).

Cubing

Cubing (Cowen and Cowen, 1980) encouraged students to construct meaning about a topic from six different perspectives. Each side of the cube required the students to use the following divergent thinking processes:

  • Description (What is it like?)
  • Comparison (What is it similar to or different from?)
  • Association (What does it make you think of?)
  • Analysis (How is it made or what is it composed of?)
  • Application (What can you do with it? How is it used?)
  • Argumentation (Take a stand, arguing for or against it.)



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Interested in Implementing Integrated Curriculum in Your School?

Here are some tips for successfully implementing integrated curriculum. 




For a more in depth look into integrated curriculum for primary grades click here.
Integrated Curriculum in the Primary Program

or check out this video! 





 Button, L. (n.d.). Curriculum integration. Curriculum Essentials A Journey. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://oer.pressbooks.pub/curriculumessentials/chapter/curriculum-integration/



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