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| Planning an Integrated Curriculum |
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"Teachers know how knowledge in their subject area is created, linked to other subjects, and applied to life experiences."
Standards of practice for the teaching profession.p.9 |
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Remembering Vygotsky
Children construct knowledge.
Learning can lead development.
Development cannot be separated from social context.
Language plays a central role in mental development.
In essence, language across the curriculum is based on the notion that language in all its forms- listening, speaking, reading, and writing (and some would include viewing)-- is pivotal to all curricular areas ("pivotal" rather than "central" is used here to diffuse the polarization between subject areas and language). Language, in this broad sense, is the way in which teachers and learners make sense and make meaning, whatever the curricular context. All teachers are teachers of language, all learning uses language, and language learning is most successful when it occurs in meaningful situations. In this way, language is integral to and cuts across all areas of the curriculum.
V. Froese, ed. Language across the curriculum. (Toronto, ON: Harcourt Brace & Company Canada, Ltd., 1997)172-3.
| Key Concepts, Big Understandings |
Bruner in The Process of Education, (1960), described curriculum in terms of key concepts or broad ideas which were addressed according to the students' developmental ability level to understand the concept. Curriculum was described as spiral in nature, with the broad concepts being revisited in greater depth as the children matured.
Current professional literature refers to "Big Understandings", topics of critical importance which students need to study to help them make sense of their world. Some have interpreted "Big Understandings" to be a set of required learnings as defined by E.D. Hirsch's ideas of cultural literacy. Others have dismissed "Big Understandings" as too theoretical and call for "Basic Skills". Kieran Egan and other writers are helping teachers to understand the concept of "Big Understandings". Some school boards are also addressing the topic in their curriculum support.
within subject
thematic studies with skill integration
integration through literature
children's interests
Sharon Rich. Reading for Meaning in the Elementary School. (Toronto, ON: ITP Nelson, 1998), 84.
