Integrating A High School Curriculum

[avaroe]

Hello!

I'm a high school teacher in Australia. I teach at a very unique school - we don't teach subjects, but rather connected learning experiences. We teach big themes in relevance instead of stand-alone subjects.

I was wondering if any other teachers work at schools across the world that DO, or TRY TO implement an integrated curriculum - or any integration that occurs at all. I want to hear any thoughts, schools you know about etc.

Thanks a lot! :D

[groovy_wizard]

I am not sure if my response will help you at all but here it is.

I too teach at a high school in Australia. Whilst we havent formally integrated our curriculum, we have focussed on trying to help students make links between different subjects. We have trialled this at Year 9 this year.

We have teacher teams in each faculty (Maths, Science, English etc...) that have specifically designed their year 9 curriculum around an essential question. Our essential question is "What does it take to change the world". So all faculties have designed their topics to answer this question. The aim is for students to be able to make links between different subjects and topics to be able to answer and understand this question deeply.

What you may be able to do is to use an essential question for each term. You would be then able to design curriculum and integrate different learning areas around this question.

We are also using Assessment by Exhibition and digital portfolios to help students collect and organise pieces of work throughout the year. They are specifically choosing pieces of work which they think reflect their ideas for what it takes to change the world.

[annettemcd]

I think that the amount of integration in a high school can vary, but that some integration is good. For examples: a social studies teacher could work with an English teacher on a writing assignment; a math teacher could work with a physics teacher on calculations necessary to solve a problem; a computer teacher could work with other teachers on computer skills needed for other classes (a template for assignments, a spreadsheet for a science experiment, internet research for a social studies paper); a health teacher could work with both the biology teacher and the physical education teacher on understanding human biology and the relationship to exercise.

I went to a residential college at Michigan State University where there was integration between different courses. It worked.

You might want to look at Evergreen College in Washington State; it has a fully integrated curriculum.

[Unregistered]

I teach in Kansas, US and we have attempted some integration between American History and American Literature. It is some what modeled after the Roger Taylor method. I attended a week long workshop by him this past summer, and it was very interesting. rogertaylor.com

[spottingu]

I am doing research into developing a fully developed high school integrated curriculum. Can you tell me the names of your schools or any others that have worked on developing this type of curriculum?