Using the Interdisciplinary Approach to Education to Meet the Literacy Standards in the Common Core: and Ensuring Graduates are College and Career Ready
The implementation of the new Common Core State Standard Initiative (CCSS) warrants changes to current curriculums. This paper establishes the interdisciplinary approach to education as an effective method of instruction for the delivery of the new standards. The CCSS define literacy and college and career readiness anchor standards that students must meet in order to be successful post-secondary. The new English language arts (ELA) literacy shifts include: literacy instruction, content area vocabulary, increase in non-fiction or information texts, increased text complexity, and 21 st century skills are all successful skills to be taught using the interdisciplinary approach and team teaching. The paper establishes a definitive basis for students to have these skills in order to be considered college and career ready in accordance with the new Common Core state standards. This approach can includes collaboration, thematic units, cross-curricular projects, or integrated in order to meet the standards.
'From ‘splendid isolation’ to productive alliances: developing meaningful cross-curricular approaches'
Some history departments find themselves under pressure to incorporate skills and competences from alternative curricula. Others find that with the pressure to ease transition issues in Year 7, history can almost disappear into an amalgam of rather random subjects taught by one overarching teacher. Steve Illingworth describes a department that faced both of these issues, but endeavoured to make the best of the situation. While the new 'Project Time' curriculum was certainly enhancing pupils' group work and presentation skills, there was concern that some of the challenge and excitement of history lessons could be disappearing. This article describes the planning behind a series of lessons which tries to promote historical learning while learning from the successes of the competence-based curriculum.
Educating the Educators: Rethinking Subject Matter and Methods
gate? In addition to general requirements in their professional education such as psychological and social foundations and student teaching, what specifically do social studies teachers need to know and be able to do? What, in particular, do they need to study in the subject matters of the social sciences (defined here, for purposes of brevity, to include history and geography), and what should they learn about its effective direction to desired results, that is, method? Usually answers to the first question require reference to the liberal arts component of teacher education and the second to methods in the professional education component. As we shall see, this separation of subject matter and method in the education of social studies teachers, although conventional, poses problems.