Advocating for a Cross-Curricular Approach

Cross-Curricular Approach

What ultimately interested me in teaching middle school is the heightened focus on experimental and creative pedagogy. Motivating and engaging students is generally valued over the rote teaching of content. Lessons read less like they were copied and pasted from the state frameworks and more like fun, comprehensive inquiries into a wide-ranging topic. By using a topic-driven curriculum, over a rigorous standards-based approach, teachers have more autonomy and influence over what they teach. Such a curriculum allows the teacher to be creative, try new things and better meet the needs of his/her students.

At the end of the day, what is the purpose of teaching early adolescents? Is it for them to memorize a list of arbitrary standards? Or, to experience, experiment and question the world around them. Is it better for them to know the function of the golgi bodies in an animal cell or to understand that throughout their life and all around the world, smaller, simpler systems work together to the benefit (or detriment) of more complex systems.

One way help connect students to larger concepts is to blur the lines between the subject areas of math, science, social science, language arts and the exploratory courses. Students, I argue, will have a better understanding of the world in which they live if the education they receive promotes such interconnectedness. This is the idea of a cross-curricular approach, as proposed by Monaghan and McConnell’s article, “English, history and song in Year 9: Mixing enquiries for a cross-curricular approach to teaching the most able.”

There is much talk and literature promoting an inquiry-based science curriculum. What this article proposes is inquiry should not be left to the school laboratory, but be used by all content areas. Discovery and questioning heighten engagement and comprehension. I used such a strategy in my student teaching last month in a 7^th grade language arts classroom. We were in a poetry unit and on this day I was to introduce limericks (a five-line nonsensical poem with an AA-BB-A rhyme scheme.)

Instead of presenting a PowerPoint or Prezi from which the students take notes, I engaged the students in a discovery activity. Each group was given five poems. Each poem was cut into four different pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. Each group was to solve each poetry puzzle and then compare and contrast each one. They discovered each poem had five lines. They discovered each poem was funny. They discovered the rhyme scheme. Some even discovered the number of syllables used in each line. Without strict note-taking to start the lesson, students were placed directly into inquiry learning. No notes, no worksheets, but a hands-on activity that had students working together, thinking and solving.

What Monaghan and McConnell ask is how do teachers take the next step of inquiry? How do teachers work together across content areas to engage students through inquiry? Their focus is on the interconnectedness of history and language arts. History, the article contends, is best taught in large, sweeping objectives, whether it is a time period or a unit on the industrial revolution, civil rights, etc.

“Teachers of history have an advantage over teacher of every other subject when it comes to using objectives and outcomes in their lessons.”

I believe this is only partially true. Yes, history teacher may have an advantage, but the perceived advantage is greater than what is actually available for teachers. There is no reason science can’t be taught using more general, cross-curricular objectives (human and adolescent health, environmental issues, medicine). Math and language arts can also be taught using broad objectives. The teacher just has to look at his/her curriculum from a broader point of view.

Take, for example, a unit on human and adolescent health. In science, students can study bacteria, virus and puberty. They can measure their heart rate and discover which foods have the best nutritional value. In math, students can devise questionnaires and gather statistics on student eating habits. In history, students can learn about child labor and the harsh working conditions youth suffered in the late 1800s and early 1900s as well as the social changes that emerged. In language arts, students can be initiated to all forms of informational texts. They can debate and write about issues and personal experiences.

As noted by Monaghan and McConnell, such a cross-curricular approach requires teachers to work together and think more progressively. Change does not happen overnight and it doesn’t happen without some resistance. But when teachers focus on the developmental needs of their students and what ways to best engage them, such a cross-curricular, inquiry approach can manifest itself and thrive in middle schools.

Monaghan, M., & McConnell, T. (2005). English, history and song in year 9: mixing enquiries for a cross-curricular approach to teaching the most able. Teaching History. 121. 22-28.