Running head: CONTENT KNOWLEDGE IN INTERDISCIPLINARY CURRICULUM 1

Content Knowledge in Interdisciplinary Curriculum

Brianna Gertis

Regent University

In partial fulfillment of UED 496 Field Experience ePortfolio, Fall 2018

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Introduction

The integration of two or more topics with a focus on strong content knowledge of

standards-based instruction is imperative to support academic achievement. Integrating topics and

strategies for one strong lesson allows the students to see that the information they receive will be

used not only in one area of school, but many areas of life. It also provides a solid foundation of

skills and strategies they need to be able to perform on a daily basis and strengthens those strategies

through practice and integration of subjects.

Rationale for Selection of Artifacts

I chose the Very Hungry Caterpillar lesson plan as my first artifact because it captures true

integration of subjects throughout the lesson including SOL’s English 1.9 (g and i); “The student

will read and demonstrate comprehension of a variety of fictional texts, the students will retell

stories and events, using beginning, middle, and end in a sequential order, the students will read

and reread familiar stories and poems with fluency, accuracy, and meaningful expression”, and

Mathematics 1.3; “The student, given an ordered set of ten objects and/or pictures, will indicate

the ordinal position of each object, first through tenth.” Since the story is an easy read, reading it

with the students in a Reader’s Theater type of setting allows them to work on reading with

expression and increasing their fluency. During this time, the students read the story along with

the teacher as a whole group. The day before doing this lesson plan, the story was read to the

students by me alone to get them familiar with the words so that when they read the story with me

they were able to focus on the expression in their voices using their reading strategies of re-reading

the sentence, reading how you talk, and focusing on punctuation. When reading the story as a

whole group with the students, it is important to pay attention to which students were not

understanding the concept or reading with fluency, so they can be worked with more on their
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reading skills throughout centers time. So, while this lesson dealt a lot with reading fluently, the

students did a follow-up activity after Reader’s Theater that focused on ordinal numbers and

introduced them to sequencing. The students took the sequence of events that was in the Very

Hungry Caterpillar story and as a whole group we put the events in order. They then had to write

out their ordinal numbers on each event, from first to twelfth, and illustrate the events after their

ordinal numbers had been places, thus integrating their skills of reading with fluency with learning

ordinal numbers through the same materials. Their posters were hung in the hall so that they could

feel proud of their final product!

For the second artifact, I chose the Duck for President lesson plan because it successfully

integrates SOL’s Social Science 1.10.f; The student will apply the traits of a good citizen by

participating in classroom decision making through voting, and Mathematics 1.12; The student

will collect, organize, and represent various forms of data using tables, picture graphs, and object

graphs. I read the story Duck for President to the students to teach them about voting during the

time of the most recent election. This way, they were able to connect what they were learning in

school to the real world and have a better understanding as to why they are learning the material.

Following the book about elections, we had three different classroom elections throughout the

week: one was in relation to the book and they voted on who should have been president between

the duck and the farmer, the next was which type of candy was the majority favorite, and the third

was which type of treat should be brought in for fun Friday. With every single election we had,

they cast their ballots and I tallied the results over the document camera while they also tallied

along with me. We talked about tallying and collecting data, we analyzed the tally marks and

figured out which category had the most and least, we spoke about the fairness of voting in this

way, and that it is the fairest way to determine the majority vote of the class. We also recalled the
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aspects of voting including citizenship, age, and whether or not the ballots had to be anonymous

or not. Integrating tallying with the lesson on voting was a success, as they correlated well and

allowed the students to have more of a visual of the results of the elections.

Reflection on Theory and Practice

In an integrated curriculum, “teachers identify and weave thinking skills, social skills,

multiple intelligences, technology, or study skills across all the course offerings and co-curricular

events of the school (Rutherford, 2015). Not only have we learned throughout the years of being

in Regent the way to integrate the curriculum and how to do so, we have also been highly trained

on the benefits of using such an approach. For example, my lesson to the students about the history

of Powhatan not only included a read aloud story, a video on the smart board, and a cut, color, and

glue Powhatan mini book, but it also integrated into math as instead of normal addition sheets I

used an addition sheet where they had to solve the problems to color Pocahontas. This way, they

are constantly activating prior knowledge and thinking about the lessons all day by applying them

to other subjects. Using an integrated approach to teaching subjects throughout the curriculum

proves diligence in teaching, as aligned with the principle of using time wisely, efficiently, and

diligently which we are called to do in Proverbs 13:4; “the soul of the sluggard craves and gets

nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.”

“The main purpose of an integrated curriculum is to have a student-centered curriculum

that engages students, improves student learning, and increases student interest. Higher-order

thinking skills, cooperative learning, and consideration of other students’ values are emphasized.

An integrated curriculum allows students the opportunity to notice the meaning and purpose in the

material. Students also gain a deeper understanding of the material” (Costly, 2015). Integrating the

curriculum is a topic highly discussed in Regent, as the program we study is an interdisciplinary

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program. Gaining an education through Regent provides us with a framework to be well versed in

integration through the subjects in order to accomplish the most effective method of teaching and

most productive use of time. This efficient method of organizing the material is proven to be

efficient in allowing the students to be challenged while participating in higher level learning such

as asking the students deeper, more thoughtful questions to get them intrigued, rather than simply

scratching the surface of the subject. “Research indicates that using an interdisciplinary or

integrated curriculum provides more opportunities for more relevant, less fragmented, and more

stimulated experiences for learners. Other benefits have been found are that it is student-centered,

improves higher level thinking skills and problem solving, and improves retention” (Stohlmann,

2012).
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References

Costly, K. (2015). Research Supporting Integrated Curriculum: Evidence for Using this Method

of Instruction in Public School Classrooms. Arkansas Tech University.

Rutherford, P. (2015). Instruction for all students. Alexandria, VA: Just ASK.

Stohlmann, M. (2012). Considerations for Teaching Integrated STEM Education. Journal of Pre-

College Engineering Education Research. Vol.2: Iss. 1, Article 4.