The specific lesson that came to mind ties in with a writing assignment the students had. They were required to come up with a theme for their restaurant, write a description using vivid, juicy words, and coming up with prices for each item. They were required to make a cover for their menu which incorporates art into the lesson as well. What I liked most about this lesson was when they were finished with creating their menus we used them to practice adding and subtracting decimals. They traded menus with a partner and had to create addition problems by adding up the things they wanted to order. They all came up with multiple combinations and added them up to know what their totals would be. This lesson was one of my favorite lessons to teach. The students loved to use each others menus and come up with their orders, they began to truly understand how to add decimals. This is just one example of interdisciplinary teaching that engaged the students in learning the content, and is the lesson that makes me want to try to teach interdisciplinary as much as I can.
Some resources that I have found on interdisciplinary teaching that will help create a successful lesson are...
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/interdisciplinary/demonstration.html
This resource is a great one to help plan interdisciplinary lessons for all grades and all content areas. It has videos of teachers telling about lessons they have done in the past or about why interdisciplinary lessons are so important and useful in schools today. I believe that having this resource as I start my teaching career will help me a great deal.
http://www.mcc.cc.ms.us/techprep/lessons.htm
This is a website that has tons of links for lesson ideas that are interdisciplinary. I looked through a lot of the lessons that are on this site and they look great. The ones I looked at were mostly for elementary level classes but could be adapted for many different grades. I believe that having a resource that gives you ideas for lessons that you could work into many units. Even if you don't follow the lesson exactly, these websites give you ideas for the basis of a lesson and allows you to adapt it so that it will work for what you want. I really enjoyed this website and believe that it will be very helpful to me in the future.
I responded to...
Melina Rinehart
Courtney lyon
Sarah fredricks
Allison,
ReplyDeletefor a young group of students that is a great way to teach Math. Math seems to be one of the subjects where it may be difficult to incorporate other disciplines. Math can be very black and white/right or wrong so to try incorporating art or science may be a task. Once accomplished though, it is awesome! Math would appeal to a broad range of student with different learning styles. Hopefully you will have the time to continue creating interdisciplinary lessons!
Hi Allison,
ReplyDeleteI thought your websites were very helpful. This Math lesson is a great idea and something that all students can get really excited about it. I liked how you had the students use descriptive words to describe the food.
Hi Allison,
ReplyDeleteI like that your source suggestions go directly to sites that have interdisciplinary lessons ready to go. That makes things so much easier! I'm intrigued by Amy Benjamin's English/Science combo for high school students. I will definitely have to check that out, as I have trouble integrating English with disciplines other than art and history, and am always looking for creative ideas.
The comments above pertaining to math got me thinking about another important point in math, and I wonder if it applies to English too. I think that students are more intimidated by math than any other subject (some students seem to be averse to English too, but for other reasons). I think students avoid math work more than they avoid work in any other subject. Math is one subject that builds explicitly on units and steps. If you miss one, you're lost. I wonder if this applies to something abstract like English, too. And I wonder if there is avoidance of work in English too. Just some food for thought.