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21 February 2017
SLO 4
During the fall semester of 2016, I participated in a course that fostered my ability to
create an integrated unit with other classmates. Our plan was designed for a second grade class in
Bodega Bay, focusing on Watercraft. Upon beginning the project, watercraft continued to
provide us with important knowledge to connect to the various subject areas, as well as the
childrens home lives. Living in Bodega Bay, the majority of the students families use watercraft
for either work or pleasure, making the topic incredibly relevant to their learning. We designed
exciting and engaging activities that provided students with important knowledge over the
content areas.
Throughout the course, the importance of providing students with opportunities to engage
in play was reiterated through the textbooks and our coursework. Therefore, such incorporation
was deemed necessary in the creation of our integrated unit. According to Krogh (2014), play
can be implemented into every subject matter and allows for students to explore topics through
plays intrinsic nature. Within our integrated unit, we frequently incorporated both play and
inquiry opportunities together to further their knowledge through play exploration and questions.
One example of this was expressed in the Boat Buoyancy Bonanza activity. Students were able
to hypothesize about the concept of buoyancy and then play with different materials to create a
boat. The boats were then placed in a water tub and pennies were added to the boats to determine
which boat could hold the most weight while remaining buoyant. This activity allowed students
to engage in constructive play in which they used their own hypotheses and the materials
available to produce their ideal boat. Similarly, play activities further learning because students
are intrinsically motivated by their own beliefs and desires. The intrinsic motivation of play
provides more meaningful understandings of topics because students are truly engaged in an
activity that interests them. For instance, children are more likely to comprehend the concept of
buoyancy after creating their own boats because they were given the opportunity to explore
through play and review the outcomes of their creations. Overall, the buoyancy activity provided
students with an opportunity to further their scientific understandings through constructive play
and exploration.
As we have learned, parents are incredibly important to students, as they are their first
teachers. Along with being their teachers, they introduce the children to their unique culture,
each with specific characteristics and qualities. To be responsive to these cultures, our integrated
curriculum focused on the importance of incorporating culturally relevant experiences for young
children. As discussed by Derman-Sparks (2010), there are four goals in anti-bias education. For
our unit, we decided to include a project that focused around the first goal, gaining family
pride (p. 4). The assignment surrounded incorporating the families into the unit by interviewing
them. Students would go home and talk to their families about the various ways their ancestors
traveled. Hopefully, some of the families had travelled by sea but any sort of travel would be
discussed. The goal was to connect to their ancestral backgrounds while also fostering literacy
growth. Through this activity, children gained a greater appreciation for their families in the
A great portion of the course was dedicated to identifying and implementing culturally
appropriate practices within elementary school curricula. Through our integrated unit, we
activity, students were presented with examples of watercraft from different cultures. Such
examples could include the rafts used on the Nile and would provide students with a greater
understanding of the ways and materials different cultures travel on and use to create watercraft.
By providing this knowledge, students will more likely express comfort and joy with human
diversity, an important goal of anti-bias curriculum (Derman-Sparks, 2010, p. 4). The activity
would also allow students to compare and contrast the watercraft to those seen in the United
States culture. Through the activity, children were able to practice using language to compare
and contrast, while gaining a greater understanding of the cultures using watercraft around the
world.
needs. For one of the activities, Pirate Yoga, we instructed students to move their bodies into
common yoga poses with altered names, fitting the pirate theme. As with any physical education
activity, it is imperative to plan to make any adaptations for children with differing abilities. All
children need to be able to participate in the activities to their fullest extent, making support
necessary for certain children. With this knowledge, I planned the Pirate Yoga activity, ready and
able to adapt the different poses to accommodate for children challenged by balancing or those
unable to use their legs. Each pose could be altered to incorporate one or more body parts,
depending on the needs of the students. For example, if a student was unable to stand, the poses
could be completed with their arms, instead. With these plans in place, I am confident that every
Upon reviewing my Integrated Unit plan, I realized we did not incorporate enough
examples of culturally appropriate practices. If I were complete this assignment again, I would
review the choices and hopefully incorporate an activity that introduces diverse languages. While
the students in our classroom all spoke English at home, introducing students to new languages is
beneficial both cognitively as well as in assisting students to be better global community
members. For the activity, I would introduce different terms for watercraft as well as translations
to these terms in other languages. After practicing a few times, I would play a game with the
students in which they would come up and hold flashcards for the language and words. Students
would then respond orally to the flashcards as a class. This fun activity would be beneficial to
curriculum for second graders. The topic of watercraft easily blended with the California
Common Core State Standards. The activities encouraged play, exploration, and inquiry into
meaningful topics. With the topics holding meaning for the lives of the students in Bodega Bay,
Derman-Sparks, L., Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and
Ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Krogh, S. L., Morehouse, P. (2014). The Early Childhood Curriculum: Inquiry Learning