Interdisciplinary
Initially, I had no understanding around this concept and needed to try and research what this all meant. The biggest contributor to educating me on the subject was actually the blogs from some of my MindLab peers, along with the support of relevant videos.
Image retrieved from https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/files/2015/05/Untitled-2.jpg
Although it was a real struggle for me to identify an example of interdisciplinary in my own teaching practice. The best example I could formulate was that I work within a Syndicate team made up of myself and two other teachers. Across this team we plan together, especially around topic/inquiry learning and we look to divide our students based on interest, strengths, weaknesses and learning styles amongst the three of us over the afternoon periods several times a week.
We each play a part in the planning. We collate activities, lessons and parts of unit plans to provide a starting point for our students. Each teacher is involved so that we are able to accommodate every child, as we do not necessarily teach children from our own classes during this time. We work to use our own strengths so that the students get the best out of their learning.
Our Team Leader takes a position alongside us to use our experience to give the different perspectives for the lessons and recognises the different pathways we are able to accommodate through opening the students to pick their own pathways depending on which teacher they work with. Each of the lessons, especially this term, have been adapted to incorporate various areas of the curriculum and social aspects. Our current example of interdisciplinary is science focused as we our working towards the local Science Fair. Not only are the students being exposed to science but they are also considering literacy, numeracy, ethics, fair testing, thinking skills, problem solving and working with others.
The challenges that we seem to face are that as a team not everyone has the same passion for things, time management is not easily acquired for everyone and organisational skills of some are reflected differently in another. I have begun to see the reliance on others within the team as I see being reflected in the students. The other major challenge is with the students. What about those who do not want to be motivated? There are those that like structure and being directed what to do. Interdisciplinary can be seen to complicate things for some, whereas, others see it as a challenge to explore their deeper thinking. How do we teach our students to adapt? The world is forever changing and we are even seeing now in New Zealand the impact events can have. We only have to look at the ripples that were sent throughout New Zealand and the impact the Christchurch earthquakes had on kiwis. How do we prepare our students to be flexible to change and acknowledge the devastating situations that they may encounter abroad?
Image retrieved from https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/files/2015/05/Untitled-2.jpg
Although it was a real struggle for me to identify an example of interdisciplinary in my own teaching practice. The best example I could formulate was that I work within a Syndicate team made up of myself and two other teachers. Across this team we plan together, especially around topic/inquiry learning and we look to divide our students based on interest, strengths, weaknesses and learning styles amongst the three of us over the afternoon periods several times a week.
We each play a part in the planning. We collate activities, lessons and parts of unit plans to provide a starting point for our students. Each teacher is involved so that we are able to accommodate every child, as we do not necessarily teach children from our own classes during this time. We work to use our own strengths so that the students get the best out of their learning.
Our Team Leader takes a position alongside us to use our experience to give the different perspectives for the lessons and recognises the different pathways we are able to accommodate through opening the students to pick their own pathways depending on which teacher they work with. Each of the lessons, especially this term, have been adapted to incorporate various areas of the curriculum and social aspects. Our current example of interdisciplinary is science focused as we our working towards the local Science Fair. Not only are the students being exposed to science but they are also considering literacy, numeracy, ethics, fair testing, thinking skills, problem solving and working with others.
The challenges that we seem to face are that as a team not everyone has the same passion for things, time management is not easily acquired for everyone and organisational skills of some are reflected differently in another. I have begun to see the reliance on others within the team as I see being reflected in the students. The other major challenge is with the students. What about those who do not want to be motivated? There are those that like structure and being directed what to do. Interdisciplinary can be seen to complicate things for some, whereas, others see it as a challenge to explore their deeper thinking. How do we teach our students to adapt? The world is forever changing and we are even seeing now in New Zealand the impact events can have. We only have to look at the ripples that were sent throughout New Zealand and the impact the Christchurch earthquakes had on kiwis. How do we prepare our students to be flexible to change and acknowledge the devastating situations that they may encounter abroad?
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