AHS Zoo School Focus and Development

Interdisciplinary Training

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Agenda Focus and Development with Mrs. Pack

Zoo Tour

Lunch (on your own)

Interdisciplinary Teaching Intro

Planning

Why Interdisciplinary Units?

As teachers facilitate interdisciplinary units within a curriculum framework, two things happen:1. Students are encouraged to integrate learning

experiences into their schemes of meaning to deepen their understanding.

2. Students are engaged in seeking, acquiring, and using knowledge in the context of problems, interests, issues, and concerns at hand.

What Is an Interdisciplinary Unit?

• Organize concepts and skills into meaningful structures for teaching and learning

• Connecting tools that facilitate student learning, communication, experience, and understanding

• Extend learning time and provide opportunities for real life applications

• Combine procedural and declarative knowledge to create meaningful, authentic activities; and develop student thinking and problem solving skills

Interdisciplinary Learning Design within Context of Student Learning

Academic Skill-Based; 21st

Century Skill- Based

Knowledge BasedConnections

Real World Application

Academic Rigor Prepares Students for College

from Edutopia.org

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Steps and Questions for Backward Design of Interdisciplinary Work

Backward Design Steps Questions for Curriculum Planners

1. Identify the purpose and desired results.

What is worthy of and required for understanding?How will students be different at the end of the unit?

2. Review the Standards to determine how to use them in an interdisciplinary framework.

Can Standards be organized in meaningful ways that cut across the curriculum?

3. Determine acceptable evidence. What is evidence of understanding?

4. Plan learning experiences that lead to desired results.

What learning experiences promote understanding and lead to desired results?

Identifying Standards

• Standards guide the learning and keep you on track

• Standards keep the learning focused and purposeful

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What Are Power Standards

• The most critical standards.• Highly focused, specific areas of instructional

emphasis

Enduring Understanding and Guiding Questions

Example 1:Outcome

Students explain how scientific understanding builds on itself over time, and how advancements in science depend on creative thinking based on knowledge and innovations of others.

Example 1: 21st Century Interdisciplinary Examples

Students choose a scientific theory and research the history of its development, then use concept mapping or time lining software to diagram previous discoveries, ideas, and technologies upon which the theory was predicated and the different disciplines from which previous knowledge was drawn. Students report on how this theory represented a creative way of approaching this scientific question.

Resource: 21stcenturyskills.org

Example 2:Outcome

Students can explain how personal, societal, and cultural perspectives influence the scientific questions people pursue, and how people interpret scientific information.

Example 2:21st Century Interdisciplinary Examples

After studying the background content of a current scientific or technology related issue, discovery or event, student teams use online news sources and internet radio broadcasts from other countries to compare and contrast international coverage of the topic with that of U.S. media. Students identify different uses of wording, including persuasive, derogatory, etc. Students examine how the informational and editorial aspects of reporting on science might be different in other cultures and in diverse American sub-cultures, then use social networking tools or wikis to discuss these differences with students in other regions of the country or other countries.

Unit Design Template

Teachers Today

Time to Work

• Develop your first interdisciplinary unit of study for the school year

• Conduct a 30 minute presentation of your interdisciplinary unit

• Explain the topic and/or concept that is being taught in your section of the unit

• Explain/demonstrate a lesson from the unit• Explain how your section of the interdisciplinary unit relates

to the overall topic/concept of the interdisciplinary unit

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Resources