Up to this point, I have felt a sense of complete overwhelm at the thought of working all the content from all the subjects into a cohesive plan. I have a hard enough time scoping and planning a single lesson in a single subject…how on Earth will I be able to organize and plan an entire year’s worth of instruction AND make it comprehensive, integrated, clear and engaging?
During last night’s class, this overwhelm started to lift a bit. I’m starting to see how thinking and planning in an integrated way across the curriculum can be both more efficient and more engaging: working smarter, not harder. A clear example is using social studies (and science) content as the basis for non-fiction reading comprehension instruction. By building NF comprehension skills, students learn to interact deeper and more personally with the content, which makes it more engaging and more memorable. Likewise, I’m seeing the same teaching tools and strategies popping up in multiple courses, which is helpful and comforting. While the process still mystifies me, I’m at least starting to see that it’s theoretically doable. Progress. 🙂
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Thinking about vocab instruction… I love thinking about words and how they relate to, and differ from, other words. I hope I can “infect” my students with the same enthusiasm, and plan to use lots of informal word games and challenges in the classroom. But for formal instruction, I wonder about choosing only a few, high-impact words to really dive deep with. I think this makes sense, and the research clearly supports that strategy. But what do we do with the other vocab that the “the establishment” finds important enough to add to the curriculum framework? Will just a parenthetical definition here and there be enough to satisfy both the students’ needs and the expectations of administration? Or is there some middle ground that won’t overwhelm students’ capacity but still builds a working knowledge of other important vocab?
Hi Lisa, I am so glad to hear that you are beginning to feel a bit more peaceful about cross-curricular planning! Feeling overwhelmed though is very normal at this stage of the game! It will all come around soon enough. There are definitely are a variety of strategies out there to teach vocabulary. I agree with you that teaching a few terms deeply is a good thing but what about the other words? Sometimes students learn the meaning of words in the context of the lesson. I have a video to share in class where the teacher does a nice job of front-loading the lesson by teaching the vocabulary. I look forward to sharing it with the class.
Thank you for your reflection!