Why should you plan and teach an integrated curriculum?
Well, because life is integrated and by teaching subjects in isolation,
children find it difficult to see the connections to their own lives.
By planning experiences that cut across different subjects it allows children to
engage in relevant, meaningful activities that can be connected to real life.
When children fail to see the point of learning something it's because
they can't connect it to real world experiences in their own lives.
Just think about how often kids in your classroom was well,
why do we need to learn this?
Well because they haven't connected it to a real life experience.
And when you can plan experiences where students can actively engage in
their learning and that simultaneously meets multiple curriculum outcomes,
learning becomes more authentic.
And of course it cuts your planning time and makes teaching so much more fun.
So, how do you integrate.
Integration usually involves two or more subject areas.
When you think about it, English language arts really integrates with
everything, but the trick comes in when you have to consider in English,
the stories you'll read, the grammar you'll be teaching or the writing
conventions that you want to include.
In those early years before formal teaching starts.
Teaching in themes,
do you remember them used to be all the rage and then that
somehow fell out of favor?
But here's the thing.
Themes by themselves are meaningless to children.
Unless they can actually make connections to their real life experiences.
Because we have to remember that young children learn through their senses.
This is why it makes my blood boil
when I see pre-primary students learning about space and the planets and
learning about the order of the planets.
Firstly, it's not in the curriculum.
And secondly, they cannot experience those planets or even the concept of space.
All they can see is the sun and the moon and stars at night.
So learning about space
for example, I'm just getting onto this little soapbox just quickly,
is not developmentally appropriate for a four or five-year-old.
And if you really know the curriculum you'll see that space
comes much later when children are old enough to think abstractly.
Now I know you might say, oh, well, I have this child who's
really interested in space.
Well, fabulous.
You create a space section and in your classroom with space books and
provocations, you and you allow, and you encourage that child and other
children if there are children who were interested in space to go and explore
that, and you can chat about it and the kid can come and talk about it.
If you know, you're getting them to talk about it during their circle time.
But you're not teaching a whole topic on it.
And themes are really also about the big picture.
There about broad topics like water or our identity or farm life, or how
has technology changed our lives?
And honestly I'm thinking themes in the early years should make a comeback.
The reason I say this is based on the fact that we're seeing more and more children
entering formal learning years with really poor vocabulary and language skills.
But again, if you're going to teach themes well and deeply, it will mean integrating
across subject areas and spending several weeks or even a whole term on
this theme to make a truly meaningful experience and one that is developmentally
appropriate and where children can make connections to their own lives.
And so today I just want to focus on how can we, at the very least
integrate English language arts with science and perhaps even math.
And stay to the end because I'll tell you about a very free, nifty
little resource I have for you.
That's going to help make your planning integrated experiences so much easier.
And in those preschool years, you can think about what are
children really interested in.
For young children they are mostly interested only in themselves, their
families, their friends, and animals.
And when you're planning experiences start by getting a whole bunch
of picture books about the theme and then setting up provocations.
Focus on vocabulary and using the words often, don't forget about
nursery rhymes, which are so important for phonological awareness.
And then see where you can include mathematical concepts like
measurement and graphing and weighing,
and hefting for example, And most importantly, in these early years allow
the children's interests to lead the way.
As educators, we need to be flexible.
On a rainy day, for example, allow them to jump in puddles.
You know, Claire Warden has a whole book on puddles as a provocation for learning.
And I had a fabulous conversation with her in episode 24.
So, and listen to that one after this one.
And just think about it for a minute.
You've got reflection happening in puddles.
You've got evaporation, you've got absorption.
Your biggest asset in these years is an inquiring mind.
Be ready for those teachable moments and have your open-ended wonder questions
up your sleeve so that you can use them to get kids thinking and wondering.
And before, you know it, you might be doing a whole unit of work on
puddles and exploring why in some areas, puddles disappear quickly.
And in other areas, puddles take ages to disappear.
Poems about puddles.
You could use.
You know, stories about puddles, making rhymes about puddles, find words
in the puddle that you could use in making up a poem or one little story.
Water muddy, dirty brown.
The provocations and the opportunities to learn are only
limited by our imaginations.
You know, you could even use a length of string and explore the circumference of
a puddle and measure it and a measuring stick to measure the depth of a puddle and
the changes in the depth as it evaporates.
Children could create art with muddy water and even explore making leaf
boats to observe floating and sinking.
You really, again are only limited by your imagination.
So let's look at how we can integrate science into our
other learning experiences.
And again, stay to the end because I'm going to be talking
about the elephant in the room.
Now when you're planning science, I've always advocated for
aligning science with the seasons.
For example.
In year two.
You want to learn about growth and change in spring.
So here in Australia, that would be term three.
October to March our windy months.
So perhaps that's the time to include your physical science when you're
learning about forces, because you can include wind as a force.
Term one will be great for that because you can create wind
sculptures and kites, for example.
Chemical sciences I've always left until term four, because
that explores change in matter.
So that's your baking for your Christmas goodies or your pizzas or
whatever it is you want to do there.
And you can also explore textiles because we do a lot of textile crafts.
And which textiles are suitable for certain types of conditions of course.
And if you're making kites in term one and you will be exploring
the properties of materials.
To find the most suitable material for making kites so that when you're
working with your textiles again in term four, you're revisiting that
component of the curriculum, And then that leaves earth and space sciences.
Which is the water cycle, but there's so much to it.
I think it's also important to remember that just because you teach the water
cycle in term two, for example, It's not done and dusted at the end of term two.
In the later part of term two and the first half of term three, that's
when it's raining and as educators, we need to be alert to that.
And we continue our discussions and continue checking our rain gauges.
. That we made in term two, for example, even in term three.
Because learning never stops.
The one writing convention, when we're talking about the writing part.
Well, the English language part that I like to teach very early
on, is procedural writing.
And this is because procedural writing is such a big part of the science curriculum.
So imagine you're teaching forces, let's say in term one.
And you'll be getting picture books about windy days, and kite
flying and kite making and forces.
And with those picture books that you've chosen, you might be doing character
descriptions about the main character.
And perhaps retelling the story.
And identifying the problem in the story.
And at the same time, you're doing lots of hands on experiments to discover
the difference between push and pull.
And you'll be creating a vocabulary wall, just like in themes, where
you practice, including these words in your everyday language.
You'll be using the words for learning about syllables and even in year one and
two investigate the endings of words or how words change when they become plurals,
for example, and ask your children to come up with a spelling rule for what happens
to words when you add a Y or what happens to a split diagraph, how does that change?
And this is why it's so important to choose good literature because
good books give you so much to explore when it comes to language.
And then I like to use non-fiction texts.
Like in this instance, let's just keep talking about forces or wind, to
learn about the actual subject matter in your small guided reading groups.
That way, not only are you teaching about the topic, but you will also
be focusing on comprehension and whatever other skills you want to
teach in a guided reading lesson.
It could be finding supporting facts or how to look for key
words to answer questions.
I've always used texts from A to Z Reading or Cool Australia, or even in Australia,
we have these Ric Ric books that are linked to the Australian curriculum.
Love using them too, for my guided reading texts that link to a science topic or even
a social studies topic that I'm teaching.
Or sometimes just make a copy of a page or two from a non-fiction book
and then set up your own questions.
So that way you're teaching about your science or your social studies
topic in your guided reading time.
So really you're meeting the outcomes of multiple subject areas within one lesson.
Your science unit will start like all good teaching by first,
finding out what kids already know.
So you'll be doing a brainstorm.
Maybe you'll use a mind map or perhaps a talking tub.
Which you can learn more about in my interview with Claire Warden, which
I'll linked in the show notes for you.
You'll be asking questions and you'll be encouraging students to ask questions.
And these questions are the catalyst for kicking off the learning
and starting your learning wall.
Which Jessica Vance spoke about in episode 26.
So when it comes to the science component, If you've taught procedure writing
and a highly recommend talk for it.
I just love using PI Colbert's Talk for Writing Across the
Curriculum to teach nonfiction writing like procedural writing.
It's so much fun to teach writing in this way.
So I'll leave a link to that in the show notes too.
So you'll be teaching this procedural writing and your procedure on how to make
a kite for example, or how to make a wind chime or how to make a boat that floats.
So now you're using that learning.
And children are applying it to their own project.
And in to talk for writing style, they're talking about, they're
telling their procedure several times before they write it.
And of course children could also decorate their kite.
So perhaps in art, you're learning about I don't know complimentary
colors, that they could use in the design of their kite to decorate it.
Or perhaps you've studied an artist and you're decorating the
kite in the style of that artist.
That's just something simple, but it works.
And then children can see how art is applied to products.
Making it very authentic and very real.
And who knows, they might be a budding surface designer in your class.
For the maths component, what about looking for, and identifying
the shapes that make up the kite?
Looking at the sides, the apex, the corners.
In making of the kite, children are applying real world geometry.
But the learning here comes from the questioning.
And I have a list of questions on my site which are great for these
kinds of moments are linked that in the show notes for you too.
Now by making this kite by the way, which also meets the outcomes
for design and technology.
So here again.
If you get children to think about, and this is where good worksheet is handy.
They draw and they plan and they label their kite and their design.
They list the materials that they're going to use.
And of course, you're having them talk about the procedure and they write
the procedure and once the kite is complete, they take a photograph of it.
Using an iPad again, you've just integrated technology and then they
print it off and they cut it out and they're glue it on this space beside
their plan that they're, and then they go off and they test their kite.
So I had this great little planning sheet that you can use with just this
kind of learning, , with children.
And I'll link that in the show notes.
So now you've got the testing day where all the children go off to
test their kite in the wind or the day that they go and they see if
their boat floats in a tub of water.
And you could even invite your buddy class or parents to this kite testing day.
And again, You know, making the kite itself will be tricky for some children,
but I've done it very successfully with just myself and my education assistant,
but you could also buddy up with older students who could help the younger
students with the making of the kite.
Or the boat or whatever, but here's the thing.
When you're helping, or if you're getting helpers in, be that your educational
assistant or parents or grandparents or older buddy, or in all the body class.
You don't change the child's design.
You honor their design and you follow their instructions
exactly even if you know that it's not going to work.
The next part is where the real learning happens.
When the kite perhaps doesn't work.
This is when you're using those questions and you're encouraging a child to really
think and analyze why this kite isn't flying, or if they're making boats from
recycled materials, why won't it float?
Why does it keep toppling over?
This is where the inquiry and the critical thinking comes in.
They then have to make adjustments or perhaps a whole
new kite or a whole new boat.
So that.
It does work as intended.
This step is often one that many teachers omit but actually it's the most important
step of all, because these are the transferable skills that children apply to
every other thing they're learning about.
And it's also that meta-cognition at work here.
It gets them thinking about how they're learning.
And then of course comes reflection and discussion.
And this again is where that critical thinking that analyzing that problem
solving comes in and communication
of course.
And afterwards when they can talk in their small groups or as a whole class about
the experience and what they learned.
And again, I highly recommend you listen to the interview I had with
Jessica Vance in episode 26 where she talks about learning walls.
Jessica talks about not having a science wall and an English wall and a maths
wall, but just a learning wall where that whole integrated unit of learning is up,
and it's visible where children can track their learning and their understanding.
I'll share a quick story with you about integrating, planting into your learning.
So when I was teaching about growth and change, of course, that was in year two.
I of course had the silkworm eggs and the mealworms on my provocation
table, but also seeds and plants.
And I was really lucky to have a little outside area where I had large tubs.
And every year the children planted something, usually lettuce and beans,
and I've also done potatoes in the past.
So we usually decide together what to plant or sometimes I have a
selection of seeds and then they decide what they want to plant.
But we always plant into our large tubs and then the children also do
their own little planting in a cup.
So we planted our seedlings and they grew, and it was time
to go away for the holidays.
But before we left, I told the children, that it might be a good idea
to measure our seedlings so that we could see exactly how much they grew
over the holidays while we were away.
And so we used unifix cubes to measure how tall that each seedling
was or each child chose a seedling and that's the one they measured.
And we took a photo.
And then each child had the opportunity to do that.
They glued the photo into the maths books.
And when we returned off the holidays, we measured the seedling again with
the unifix cubes and noted there was a difference in the height of the plant.
And this is how, I introduced the language of difference in
mathematics to the children.
The difference was the amount that the plant had grown.
And then through them, experimenting with the unifix
cubes, they figured out how you would work it out.
And of course that was by subtracting the smaller number of cubes
from the larger amount of cubes.
And the difference was the answer.
And I just, I still remember how excited the kids were about
this it was the application of real learning to their lives.
And after that they were so keen to explore this difference concept in
all sorts of things, the difference in their ages, the difference
in their heights and so on.
And I mentioned that I had a little something for you in
the beginning to help you.
And that's free technology planning sheet, and I link it in the show notes
for you to use whenever your students are planning technology projects, whether
it's making kites or boats or animals from recycled materials, doesn't matter.
It's totally generic.
I also have another sheet for you, which I'll also link, which is a planning sheet
to help you plan an integrated curriculum.
But now.
There's a very large elephant in the room.
And that is that many elementary schools are starting to take the teaching of
science away from the classroom teachers.
And getting science specialist teachers to teach science.
Now that's all very groovy in the high school years, but in
my opinion, In primary school
and most importantly, in the early childhood years,
this is a really bad idea.
Not only does it compartmentalise, learning, which is the opposite of what
good teaching is, but let's just get real.
Very few classroom teachers get together with specialist
teachers to plan integrated units.
There just isn't time.
And often what you want to teach, doesn't align with the science specialist plans.
But guess what?
There've actually been studies about how effective specialist teaching is
in elementary schools and the research clearly shows that not only do specialist
teachers not teach as well as they did when they were generalists, probably
because they don't have enough time, but student performance actually went down.
And ultimately the reason for this is the fact that specialist teachers don't
have enough time with those students to build relationships with them.
And as someone who has been in both roles, I can tell you that when
you're only seeing a class once a week for 50 minutes and in some schools,
even less than that, that's not enough time to build relationships
and really get to know children.
Specialists don't often know the backstories of children or if
there was an incident at home that morning, because as a specialist,
there is a time before every class to have a debrief session
with a classroom teacher.
So as we go forward, I really hope that school leaders will take a long,
hard look at the research, and what's best for students when it comes to
teaching and timetabling, because ultimately we need to do what's good
for students, not what suits us.
And I'll leave links in the show notes to the studies that I found
online for you to check out.
Hey, so, I hope today's episode inspired you to plan a more integrated curriculum.
I've spoken in other episodes about how to plan and I'll link these
episodes in the show notes for you too.
And Hey, if you like listening to blooming curious, and you find
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Don't forget to check out the show notes for all the links
and I'll see you next week
same time, same place, and until then stay blooming curious.