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.
Multimodal Literacies in the Secondary English Classroom
We have adopted multimodal literacy practices in our classrooms primarily for two reasons. First, multimodality is now deeply ingrained in how our society communicates (Tierney, Bond, and Bresler 359). Thus, it may be possible to draw on students’ out-of-school literacies to help them perform better in our classrooms. Second, we recognize that not all of our students are proficient in multimodality (Mills 36); thus, they need training as well as access to technology to become competitive in the workforce on graduation from high school.
Science fairs as learning tool for teaching excellence
Science fairs are usually considered to be a pedagogical and cultural activity that involves the students actively. Gifted students need challenges to further develop their skills while maintaining the motivation level. Science fairs may provide the informal environment that will request and allow these students of excellence to challenge themselves by developing a scientific research project. Despite being well known in different countries, in Portugal first steps are being made on the use and implementation of science fairs as effective pedagogical tool. In this work, we will present a 4 years study that was developed on a Portuguese school with the main goal of evaluating the advantages of this informal way of teaching. The study includes an analysis of the evolution of the students’ knowledge that have participated, or visited, the different science fairs. Some advices for the implementation of these projects will be given. The motivation of the students was monitored as well as the knowledge and skills effectively improved by this activity.