Educational Issue Reflection: Integrated Curriculum

This presentation was really enjoyable and all of the hands on activities really helped my understanding of the topic. Integrated curriculum and collaboration among teachers was something that I had a small understanding of prior to this presentation from previous education classes and my time in the classroom during practicum, and this presentation built on my knowledge and gave me a deeper understanding of what exactly integrated curriculum. My personal favorite activity was the final activity with the chart, it wasn’t quite as exhilarating as the marshmallow and spaghetti activity, but I found that it was really helpful and was exactly the kind of situation that an integrated curriculum would create. I also just think it’s really interesting that certain topics that are more math “based” or more social studies “based” can be broken down and extended into multiple different subject areas.

Collaboration is something that can be really tricky if you’re faced with someone who doesn’t want to collaborate, or a bunch of people with different philosophies and ideals of what teaching should be, but in the end trying your hardest to collaborate with your fellow teachers is something that will be beneficial to both of the students and the teachers. The students will find that their subjects are all connecting and be able to bring in outside knowledge to your classroom, and teachers will learn more about other subject areas and possibly feel as though they’re more involved overall in student’s learning, by knowing what’s going on in their other subject areas. Overall, integrated curriculum is one hundred percent student based, which is why I think I like it so much, it puts the students first, which is what school should be about.