During my placement last semester, I noticed that the classroom I was student-teaching in heavily focused on language arts and mathematics. It was very rare for the students to receive curriculum in such subjects as science, history, and art (students only did art projects to cater toward a holiday). Even physical education was an eventful treat that students only received once every two to three weeks. I felt as if the students were being robbed. They were simply not receiving a full well-balanced education. This lead me to a potential research question: How do we, as teachers in the NCLB era where there is a strong emphasis on language arts and mathematics, integrate such subjects as social students and science into the curriculum?
I want to look at effectively implementing an interdisciplinary pedagogy in the classroom where the sole focus is not on building specific skills in language and in mathematics, but to build various skills in an all-encompassing way and to be able to apply it across the different disciplines. I've heard some say that all you have to do is combine language arts and social studies (i.e. have students read historical pieces during lessons) or have them do science-based math problem, but I feel that that's easier said than done. I want to look into what it takes to make such approaches effective, engaging, and relevant for students.
This is just one thing I am currently looking into. Who knows what will catch my curiosity next and stray me away.
This is such a timely question right now. As you know (and are probably SICK of hearing your SJSU professors say), with the Common Core standards, interdisciplinary literacy is becoming more valued. The question is, what might the look like? And I hope you've looked at Emily's post, because your ideas are echoed a bit in some of her ideas for a project. Perhaps an opportunity for a little collaboration???
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