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Amelia Saunders

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

context of the integrated unit.

A great portion of the course was dedicated to identifying and implementing culturally

appropriate practices within elementary school curricula. Through our integrated unit, we

incorporated a focus on culture through a cross-cultural examination of watercraft. In this

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.

We also incorporated culturally appropriate practices relating to children with special

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

student could participate successfully in the culturally appropriate activity.

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

their understanding of different languages and would be developmentally appropriate.

Overall, this assignment provided me with opportunities to apply my knowledge of play,

developmentally appropriate practices, and culturally appropriate practices into an integrated

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,

the knowledge gained would hopefully be applicable to their daily lives.


References

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

Through Integration. New York, NY: Routledge.

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