Integration

This week we learned about integration.  Integration is taking the standard and applying it to all disciplines.  There are many types of integration that you can use in the classroom and the curriculum.  There are three approaches to integration these are the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and the transdisciplinary.  I really like the idea of using a theme to incorporate into all of the different disciplines.  Themes could be holidays, clouds, solar system, etc.  I think by using a theme the teacher could do so much teaching and use many different disciplines to teach the students.  This would also help the students to remember the material better by learning through different disciplines and this would help meet the needs of each of the different learners such as the auditory, visual, and tactile learners.  I really like the idea of using dance and music to help students learn the material.  I think they would really enjoy being able to get out of their seats and express themselves through dance and they would be learning at the same time.  Integration connects with the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standard, the particular standard is under standard three Teachers know the Content they Teach, "teachers recognize the interconnectedness of content areas/disciplines."  I do not remember using integration in school, I just remember staying in my seat, listening to the teacher talk and write on the board, and doing seat work.  We would occasionally have group work but not every day, mostly we completed our work alone.  I wish we would of used the different disciplines and connected them together, I feel like I would of learned more this way then the way I was taught.  When I was in school they taught all of the disciplines during certain times of the week but you learned about different standards/aspects in each class, instead of learning about the same aspect in each class.  I found a video this week that discusses how teachers are learning to incorporate art into their classrooms.  This was a great way for me to see how teachers are able to incorporate different disciplines into their teaching for the same content/standard.  The video was very eye opening for me and helped me to see how incorporating all of the disciplines into your teaching can be so beneficial for the students.  The link for the video is below, I hope you enjoy it, I did!  Not only can art be incorporating in teaching but all many other disciplines can be incorporated as well.  I also enjoyed learning more about essential questions in class this week.  The essential questions are incorporating many standards and do not have a yes or no answer.  I also enjoyed refreshing my memory on how to unpack standards.  I believe now I understand the Know, Understand, and Do a lot better than I did before.  I believe I had these a little confused before our class this week.  In my future class I hope to unpack my standards correctly, develop essential questions that will be helpful for the students, and to use backward design and integration to develop my lessons.  I will definitely use integration into my future classroom and will use themes to help put integration into my curriculum.  I can't wait to learn more about backward design and integration as we go through the semester!  I think my future students will benefit tremendously from integration and backward design.

Links-

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/integrating-arts-in-the-classroom-getty#