Learning Outcome Eight
Learning Outcome Eight: Integrate curriculum among disciplines, and balance historical and contemporary research, theory and practice.
I will prove my ability to integrate curriculum among disciplines, and balance historical and contemporary research, theory and practice with a lesson in which students learned about other cultures, a paper written for a Foundations of Modern Education course, and a unit plan created for an Introduction to English Language Arts course.
One way in which I have integrated curriculum among disciplines was through a lesson I gave to my seventh grade class at Grant Middle School in order to teach them about different cultures with the use of various texts. Students moved from different stations where they worked with a different text that taught them about a different culture. They worked with maps, videos, pictures, country mottos, and folklores in order to gain some knowledge about the cultures of different places such as Australia, Denmark, India, Japan, France, and more. I collaborated with the social studies teacher and discovered that students could benefit from more practice with maps which helped me to decide what types of text with which students should work. Students formed an understanding that they can read any text for information and can analyze that information on a high level of thinking. Since the lesson integrated social studies through the use of maps and country mottos, students were able to make connections between the two subjects. Students enjoyed getting to work with all different types of texts, and they benefited from the lesson by increasing what Pierre Bourdieu calls theirs “cultural capital,” an educational asset that helps promote social mobility. Students opening their minds and gaining knowledge about other cultures that differed from their own also promoted tolerance, a crucial aspect of life that students should begin to understand and practice at a young age.
Another way in which I have proven my ability to integrate curriculum among disciplines, and balance historical and contemporary research, theory and practice is through a paper that was written for a Foundations of Modern Education course. In the paper, I compare various educational theories in order to consider how they might affect practice. I argue that the theory that education cannot compensate for society is not entirely true because I believe that education can compensate for some aspects of society through motivation. I argue in the paper that motivating individuals within the classroom would allow students to choose what they wanted to do with their education and therefore give every student the chance to succeed throughout their education. I also address the theory that social and cultural capital greatly impact what a student receives from their education as well as how that student later functions as an adult. I argue that this theory of capital can be put into practice by exposing all students to a variety of people and resources so that they can gain from many different experiences. Throughout the paper, I compare many different types of research and theories and argue how to put those theories into practice in the way that would best influence students.
I also integrated curriculum across disciplines in a unit plan that I created in the Fall semester of 2008 for a Introduction to English Language Arts Course. The unit plan includes a variety of texts that would be used to discuss with students the topic of peer pressure. As one of the cumulating assessments of the unit, students would be given an assignment to create skits that showed someone resisting peer pressure. Students would then travel to an elementary school to perform their skits to an elementary health class to teach the children there about peer pressure. Not only would this assignment give students a sense of empowerment and offer them an authentic audience for their work, but it would also help them to connect their work in English to the subject of health.
I will prove my ability to integrate curriculum among disciplines, and balance historical and contemporary research, theory and practice with a lesson in which students learned about other cultures, a paper written for a Foundations of Modern Education course, and a unit plan created for an Introduction to English Language Arts course.
One way in which I have integrated curriculum among disciplines was through a lesson I gave to my seventh grade class at Grant Middle School in order to teach them about different cultures with the use of various texts. Students moved from different stations where they worked with a different text that taught them about a different culture. They worked with maps, videos, pictures, country mottos, and folklores in order to gain some knowledge about the cultures of different places such as Australia, Denmark, India, Japan, France, and more. I collaborated with the social studies teacher and discovered that students could benefit from more practice with maps which helped me to decide what types of text with which students should work. Students formed an understanding that they can read any text for information and can analyze that information on a high level of thinking. Since the lesson integrated social studies through the use of maps and country mottos, students were able to make connections between the two subjects. Students enjoyed getting to work with all different types of texts, and they benefited from the lesson by increasing what Pierre Bourdieu calls theirs “cultural capital,” an educational asset that helps promote social mobility. Students opening their minds and gaining knowledge about other cultures that differed from their own also promoted tolerance, a crucial aspect of life that students should begin to understand and practice at a young age.
Another way in which I have proven my ability to integrate curriculum among disciplines, and balance historical and contemporary research, theory and practice is through a paper that was written for a Foundations of Modern Education course. In the paper, I compare various educational theories in order to consider how they might affect practice. I argue that the theory that education cannot compensate for society is not entirely true because I believe that education can compensate for some aspects of society through motivation. I argue in the paper that motivating individuals within the classroom would allow students to choose what they wanted to do with their education and therefore give every student the chance to succeed throughout their education. I also address the theory that social and cultural capital greatly impact what a student receives from their education as well as how that student later functions as an adult. I argue that this theory of capital can be put into practice by exposing all students to a variety of people and resources so that they can gain from many different experiences. Throughout the paper, I compare many different types of research and theories and argue how to put those theories into practice in the way that would best influence students.
I also integrated curriculum across disciplines in a unit plan that I created in the Fall semester of 2008 for a Introduction to English Language Arts Course. The unit plan includes a variety of texts that would be used to discuss with students the topic of peer pressure. As one of the cumulating assessments of the unit, students would be given an assignment to create skits that showed someone resisting peer pressure. Students would then travel to an elementary school to perform their skits to an elementary health class to teach the children there about peer pressure. Not only would this assignment give students a sense of empowerment and offer them an authentic audience for their work, but it would also help them to connect their work in English to the subject of health.
