PTS: Understanding and Organizing Subject Matter for Student Learning
Element: Interrelating ideas and information within and across subject matter areas
Indicators
As teachers develop, they may ask, “How do I…” or “Why do I…”:
- Identify and integrate key concepts and relationships across subject matter areas?
- Help all students to relate subject matter concepts to previous lessons and their own lives?
- Help all students to see the relationships and connections across subject matter areas?
- Help all students to apply learning from different curricular areas to solve problems?
- Develop units and lessons that highlight themes within and across subject matter areas?
Descriptions
Examples may include, but are not limited to:
- Linking subject matter to students’ lives and previous lessons by using surveys, interest inventories, and student journals, as well as customizing homework activities and aligning assignments to preferred styles of learning
- Incorporating units/projects that highlight themes across subject areas to help students understand that problem solving in the real world requires thinking across the curriculum (i.e. environmental protection, quality of life)
- Purposefully highlighting related content from other disciplines (i.e. explaining how political culture can influence literary themes in fiction)
Problems of Practice
Challenges with this element frequently include:
- Limited or no understanding of the concepts and themes students are learning in their other subjects
- Inability or failure to weave contextual information from other disciplines into lessons (ex. political climate surrounding scientific discoveries)