Interdisciplinary Teaching

These are the kinds of lessons we only dreamed about doing when we decided to teach. Multiple disciplines can truly complement each other and bring out more student interest than any one subject can do standing alone. The work produced by the students is both artistically pleasing and useful for any mathematician or scientist. The researchers began with a study of the standards for math, language, science, art and social studies at a set grade level. From there, they looked for standards that could be connected with a common theme. After selecting related standards and choosing a theme, they built several interconnected lessons that addressed standards from multiple disciplines. They built these model lessons as an example for other standards-based thematic lessons. The researchers will share the process they went through to take the standards as the base but then expand out from there to create culturally rich and engaging activities that flow among disciplines with a common purpose. In their model lessons, the researchers will explain how they were able to use historical text, mapping skills, geometry problem solving, earth science, artwork, reading strategies and essay writing to creatively teach the required standards in a new and interesting way