Why

Why should we work with content areas beyond the core?

While centered in elective areas, these projects and coaching opportunities reinforce core content standards, are interdisciplinary and can be adapted!

Integrated instruction helps teachers better utilize instructional time and look deeper into subjects through a variety of content-specific lens.

Pumerantz & Galanto find that interdisciplinary teaching allows for students to, “Proceed at a pace commensurate with their interests, skills, and experiences” (1972).

Students have a chance to work with multiple sources of information, thus ensuring they are receiving a more inclusive perspective than they would from consulting one textbook (Wood, 1997).

What is the value?

Flowers, Mertens, & Mulhall identify five important outcomes and findings of their experiences with interdisciplinary teaching and planning: common planning time is vital, schools that team have a more positive work climate, parental contact is more frequent, teachers report a higher job satisfaction, and student achievement scores in schools that team are higher than those that do not team (1999).

Teachers can better differentiate instruction to individual student needs. Integrated instruction also allows for authentic [|assessment] (Barton & Smith, 2000).

How can we use the projects to support the core content areas, objectives, and standards?


 * From[| Fogarty, R., and Stoehr, J.] ||  ||   ||   || (1991) Integrating Curricula with Multiple Intelligences: Teams, Themes, and Threads. Palatine, IL: Skylight Publishing, Inc. ||

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