What is Integrated Curriculum?

Essentially, an integrated curriculum is one that transcends the boundaries imposed by traditional subject groupings. It allows students to move across ‘disciplines' as they learn about their world. Integrated curriculum does not do away with the distinction between those subjects or learning areas — these remain important for the purposes of balance and organisation. (Murdoch and Hornsby, 1997, p. 1)

Why Integrate?

Schools choose to integrate the curriculum for a number of reasons:

• it provides a meaningful context and purpose for learning;
• It is time efficient in a crowded school day;
• it provides for a range of interests, learning styles, levels of understanding.

How can the English Co-ordinator support English in an Integrated Curriculum ?

In secondary schools, English can become lost in an integrated curriculum. This is particularly the case when there are inexperienced teachers or non English specialists teachers teaching in a middle school situation. You should take the following steps to support teachers teaching an integrated curriculum:

• provide P.D. about the value of the integrated curriculum
• provide advice on the place of English in the integrated curriculum
• provide opportunities for sharing of successful integrated units of work
• provide opportunities for teachers to meet and jointly plan
• provide resources to support English in an integrated curriculum

Key Areas in Planning for an Integrated Curriculum

Planning

There are a number of strategies you can use to support planning for the integrated curriculum:

• plan unit of work around a shared experience such as a trip, guest speaker, book or poem
• use the planning cycle to plan relevant activities and teaching strategies
• identify and document main learning areas to be covered within unit of work
• identify key questions/understandings and relevant outcomes within each learning area
• Collect resources

Starting Points

There many different ways to get started:

• identify students interests, level of understanding,
• identify texts: film, video, contemporary literature, radio
• use shared experiences such as a trip to Molesworth or Roaring Beach
• use a "big idea" such as feelings or time shift
• focus on specific learning outcomes

Assessment

Before you begin, you need to make some important decisions about assessment. Make sure that you target knowledge, skills, strategies, values and attitudes. Think about how you will use different types of assessment such as work samples, observation and self-assessment. You also need to decide how you will use assessment criteria, TLOS, English and other relevant learning area outcomes.

For more information

For detailed information about the integrated curriculum, have a look at integrating English and teaching units. Refer also to Lively Lines and the Integrated Units Collection available from the DoE store and the Curriculum Corporation.