Interdisciplinary Teaching
This past school year, I focused on the subject of geography. While this was the main subject we focused on, it was not the only topic discussed in class. I incorporated several different subject areas throughout the school year, including other social studies topics as well as subjects not tied directly to social studies. Connecting muliple different subjects together in the classroom, which is called interdisciplinary teaching, is beneficial for students. It helps them connect topics to each others, see how they are relevant to the real world, and promote critical thinking.
01
Build a City Activity
One activity we did that incorporated several different subject areas was my "Build a City" activity. For this unit, its focus was on population and migration. I had already introduced the idea of urbanization to my students and wanted to go further. For this activity, students were given the opportunity to create their own city, however, students had to follow instructions and could only add what was on the slides. The slides followed the approximate timeline of the industrial revolution and the urbanization around that time. By following these directions, the growth of their city was supposed to represent what it was like for cities to grow.
While this activity was mostly centered around geography and it topic of urbanization and city planning, it tied in several other subject areas and skills. Throughout the slides, there are several bits of history. There are some real photos of cities and people working. This gave the class the opportunity to think critically about what they saw and connected these times in history to what they were creating. While talking about increased immigration, we talked about specific examples of increased immigration to the United States. It tied to social issues that were happening in the past and today, and we discussed the impact cities have on the environment, which related to science.
This activity also included an artistic aspect to it. Students had to draw their own map following certain guidelines. They were expected to make the buildings a certain size and color, but had the freedom to design their city how they wanted. This gave the students to connect geography to art, and they were able to be creative.
Overall, the students loved this activity. It was across several days, which gave us time to discuss the different aspects of building a city as well as having a reflection afterwards about what they discovered and felt while creating their map.
02
Warm-Ups
In my 6th grade class, we always had a warm-up to start the hour. Students had the expectation of sitting down when they walked in the classroom and getting started on their warm-up. These warm-ups were different every week and had a variety of different question prompts for the students. Almost every Monday, it asked how their weekends were, and on Fridays, students had the option to write about anything they wanted to. Some of the other questions we included were more personal, as we wanted to get to know our students. These warm-ups tied in skills students learn in an English class. They practiced their vocabulary, sentence structure, and more.
In addition to these types of questions, students also had graphs, charts, timelines, and graphics to look at. With these aspects, students were able to use some of the skills they learned in their Math classes. These graphics were about a variety of different topics, and they were meant to be practice for my students so when they found these resources in our assignments, they would be prepared. They had to be able to read the different types of graphs and charts and then answer a couple questions based on each.
03
.png)
Writing Responses
There are several opportunities for students to write in our classroom. In our civics unit, we covered the different types of government. We had several lessons about each kind, and after we went through them, I wanted my students to be able to choose one and defend why they wanted that type of government. They did this through a written response assignment. They completed this on their Chromebooks and were expected to include certain points in their response. While the topic of this question was based on what we were learning in civics, they needed to use their English skills to properly answer the prompt. They needed to be able to write a solid paragraph to defend their answer. This prompt also connected what they were learning to what is happening currently in the world. When deciding what type of government they each wanted, many of them brought in specific examples of what is happening in governments that currently exist.