Especially for Teachers - Teaching English

Integrating English
 

What is integration?
Why integrate?
What are the differences between integrated and thematic approaches?
How can we maintain the integrity of English within an integrated curriculum?
How is an integrated unit planned?
For more information

What is integration?

An integrated approach to curriculum planning provides a way of exploring concepts across subject boundaries. It enables students to make connections between their own experiences and the ever-changing world outside.

An integrated approach begins with a big idea which is

• a rich concept with potential to develop students’ understandings of themselves and their world.
• relevant to students’ interests.
• appropriate for the particular age and learning environment.
• a potential site for student investigation using a range of processes.

Connecting ideas from several learning areas are identified, a context is developed and a sequence of learning experiences for students is planned. For example When I was One, is the title of a unit which might be appropriate for students in prep/one classes. It

provides opportunities to investigate personal histories, using poetry as a context for the consideration of students’ likes and dislikes, abilities and achievements. Students develop an awareness of the similarities and differences between individuals.

CDEETY (1996) Oodles of Noodles: Early Years Integrated Units Collection

The unit focuses on the English, SOSE and Health learning areas.

In early integration trials, teachers sometimes felt that they should cram all of the learning areas into each unit. Today, teachers plan the scope and sequence of their year's program so that students engage with all of the learning areas, but each unit focuses on two or three learning areas at most.

Some teachers worry that explicit and specialist teaching will be lost in an integrated curriculum. The teaching of processes, skills and content occurs in dedicated teaching time for particular learning areas. This is timetabled separately from the integrated program.

Why integrate?

Jenni Connor has conducted a series of highly successful workshops that explain ways of integrating concepts from the learning areas into meaningful contexts for students. She has published a summary of the reasons for developing an integrated curriculum:-

Teachers teach in an integrated way part of the time because:

• in life, meaning-making occurs holistically by analogies, similarities, discrepancies and connections.
• learners connect pieces of learning automatically, but not necessarily ‘correctly’, and learning is enhanced by connections being made explicit for them.
• there are similarities and logical connections between the processes and the content of learning areas.

Integrating curriculum values and builds on the prior and out of school experiences of students.

Integrating curriculum in a valid way:

• allows students and teachers to identify both the distinctive and the related elements of learning areas.
• allows students to utilise acquired skills and prior knowledge.
• allows students to demonstrate skills and knowledge in varied contexts.
• encourages students to make connections between school learning and life-learning.
• enables teachers to contribute to many learning outcomes from a single starting point, or set of structured experiences.

In designing units of work, writers tried to:

• base the integration on key concepts or processes.
• utilise skills or values common to different learning areas as the basis of the linkage.
• connect overlapping concepts.
• value and engage different styles and modes of learning.
• connect only 3 or 4 learning areas, often using one strong ‘host’ area.

In comparison, poor versions of integrated curriculum have often been:

• more random.
• less explicitly planned in terms of learning outcomes.
• more contrived and based on ‘apparent’ rather than real similarities.
• less respectful to the content and processes of the learning areas connected.
• more trivial in terms of the ideas they foster.
• trying to relate too much, rather than doing fewer things thoroughly.
• culturally privileged and excluding in the knowledge used and valued.

The topic for an integrated unit therefore:

• should be conceptually significant and a potentially rich site for investigation.
• should lend itself to a range of processes through which to explore the content.
• should have contentious qualities relevant to serious issues for life and living.

Integrating part of the curriculum makes the experience more coherent for students and more manageable for teachers. It creates time for learning-area dedicated teaching.

Jenni Connor DoE Tas. 1998

What are the differences between integrated and thematic approaches?

A thematic approach often consists of loosely connected activities, while an integrated approach consists of a sequenced set of learning opportunities. The educational intentions of an integrated unit are shared with students and the activities are selected because they lead students towards increased understandings of themselves and the world in which they live.

Adapted from Julie Hamston and Kath Murdoch (1996) Integrating Socially

How can we maintain the integrity of English within an integrated curriculum?

Teachers are concerned about losing the integrity of the English learning area within an integrated curriculum. This is possible if teachers maintain a generalist approach for all lessons or if they have limited knowledge of English and allow it to be subsumed within the larger context of an integrated unit.

English skills and processes might well be facilitated within the integrated curriculum by the provision of real purposes and audiences for students to create visual, written and spoken texts. English can maintain its identity if teachers

• have a thorough understanding of the English learning area. Teachers need to know that providing opportunities for students to engage in reading, writing, listening and speaking activities does NOT constitute an adequate English program.

• examine the reasons why a spoken, visual or written text is used within an integrated context. For example reading a poem about numbers as a tuning in activity for a unit which focuses on measurement might be an enjoyable and interesting activity, but it is NOT teaching poetry.

• plan for dedicated English teaching time on a regular basis. Part of each day in early childhood, primary and middle school settings in junior secondary classes is spent upon explicitly teaching about English texts and language.

• contextual understanding
  
• linguistic structures and features
  
• and develop strategies for interacting with texts.

Some writers of texts about integration view English simply as a PROCESS subject. Teachers of English, however, recognise that there is a defined CONTENT within the learning area. Teachers who wish to find more information about the background to teaching English should investigate the WHAT IS ENGLISH section of the site especially

• the rationale
• an overview of English

How is an integrated unit planned?

Selecting topics

The kinds of topics chosen depend upon the teaching situation. Teachers who work in primary or middle school settings have greater flexibility in programming and have opportunities to integrate learning areas. Other teachers might find their options for units of work are restricted by the constraints of working with students for short periods of time or the requirements set by particular syllabuses.

Which topics are suited to an integrated approach in English?

The table below includes suggestions for issues that provide rich concepts for student study using English as one of the host learning areas.

Classroom practice suggests that it is best to reduce one of these very general concepts to a particular statement or question. This creates a more manageable focus for students to engage with. Jenni Connor talks about selecting topics around tension points - contentious qualities relevant to serious issues for life and living. (1998)

Thus relationships might be the stimulus for students investigating

• relationships between parents and their children
• or relationships between teenage boys and girls
• or relationships between young children and elderly people

In each case a particular focus or tension point is developed. Students might consider:

• Who has the power? In which circumstances?
• In what ways might communication be improved?
• In what ways might each group support the other?

Then a coherent work sequence is structured in which students develop, extend, and clarify their understandings about the issue.

Reasons for selecting topics

Topics develop from a wide range of sources and for a wide range of reasons such as:

• Students and teacher negotiate to find a suitably rich concept that interests most class members. A jigsaw cooperative learning strategy could be followed by a class meeting.
• A teacher decides to have students consider an issue that relates to a perceived concern or problem within the classroom e.g. If a teacher observes a bullying problem within the class, he /she might set up a unit based on contemporary picture books that deal with the issue of relationships between peers.
• The scope and sequence developed by the school might decide the major focuses for students in each year.

Practical considerations for selecting topics

Additional factors impact upon the decision-making process. These include:

• links to other units across the scope and sequence of the school program
• the availability of resources
• the accessibility of planned events such as excursions, field trips, visiting speakers
• local or world events e.g. the Olympics, local environmental issues

(See Murdoch and Hornsby,1998)

Planning frameworks - Click on this link to go to this section of the Planning page.

How to plan a unit - Click on this link to go to this section of the Planning page.

For more information

Murdoch, K (1998) Classroom connections : Strategies for Integrated Learning Eleanor Curtain Publishing.

Murdoch, K and Hornsby D (1997) Planning Curriculum Connections : Whole-School Planning for Integrated Curriculum Eleanor Curtain Publishing.

Pigdon, K and Woolley, M. (1993) The Big Picture, Heinemann, Portsmouth

Curriculum Corporation (1996) Oodles of Noodles : Integrated Units Collection Melbourne

Curriculum Corporation (1996) Part of a Pattern :Integrated Units Collection Melbourne

Curriculum Corporation (1996) From Igloos to Yurts : Integrated Units Collection Melbourne

DECCD (1997) Lively Lines: Integrated units with English and the Arts in focus Volumes 1 and 2 Tasmania

Curriculum Corporation (1998) Different Dreams Years 7 & 8 : Integrated Units Collection Melbourne

DoE (1998) Taking Action: Studies of Society and Environment in Tasmanian Schools K8 - A Reference Book Tasmania