Interdisciplinary Teaching

My last class focused on interdisciplinary teaching and learning. I came away believing that the benefits of interdisciplinary teaching and learning are extremely valuable. Teaching in such a manner would serve to better access students’ individual learning modalities. As the National Council of Teachers Of English (NCTE) posit in their position statement on Interdisciplinary Learning:

“An interdisciplinary education which draws from the knowledge and processes of multiple disciplines should encourage students to become active learners equipped with the analytical, interpretative, and evaluative skills needed to solve real-life problems. Eliminating artificial barriers among subject areas gives students a broader context for solving real-life problems.” (NCTE, Consortium for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning, 1995)

A challenging aspect of teaching in this manner is that it would require more work from the educator. It would require a lot of thoughtful planning. However, the results would be very rewarding and more than amply compensate for the extra time put in.

The blog assignment for this week states to choose a topic that I commonly teach. Seeing that I do not have a classroom of my own, I will refer back to my imaginary 3d classroom (partially created from my second student teaching placement). In third grade mathematics one of the standards is geometry.

Resource 1

I found a very cool technological tool to help students master the different shapes. 

The program is called GoogleSketchUp (http://sketchup.google.com/) 

The website that has a lot of resources for teachers is: http://mathforum.org/sketchup/index.html

 

This tool allows students to create their own figures. They will be able to design buildings using the shapes that they learned about. I think this will be extremely helpful for the students. It will allow them to visualize how various geometrical shapes mold the world they live in. A potential lesson could include the students drawing out their buildings/shapes on graph paper first, before creating the figures on the app.

Resource 2

Another great way to teach geometry is through art. I would create a slideshow with a variety of paintings or go through a museum online. There is plenty that can be done with art. For example, there can be a discussion about the history of the artwork, the students can create their own artwork, the students can wrtie about their artwork, etc.

This pdf has a list of great art that would help teach geometry. (Starting on page 5) http://hti.math.uh.edu/curriculum/units/2004/06/04.06.08.pdf

This is another site that showcases a lot of Piet Mondrian's artwork: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/piet-mondrian/composition-with-large-red-plane-yellow-black-gray-and-blue-1921 

I also found a really interesting lesson that incorporates many resources outside of Mathematics: http://www.philamuseum.org/education/lesson_plans/6.html

 This lesson has students looking at art images from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The students discuss why families would create quilts. (historical context) The students then would create their own paper quilts. I would suggest having the students bring in a cloth item (that they would cut into a shape) from home. The students can then create a class quilt.

I responded to Christina Baronian's blog. (missbaronian.blogspot.com)