Suggestions For Integrated Curriculum

    After last weeks lesson on integrated learning I think that there are a number of different ways to incorporate integrated learning into your social studies lesson planning. I really enjoyed Zoe's activity involving the Olympics. I thought that it seamlessly involved a number of different subject areas into a lesson that was based around something that all the students should be familiar with. I think you can use integrated learning in a number of different ways in relation to social studies. You could have the students work on learning about their communities and the issues that are present, or maybe, on a bigger scale, such as the city of Toronto, the GTA, or Canada as a whole. While touching on big ideas in the social studies curriculum you could also incorporate mathematics, in terms of stats, history, geography etc.

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     For instance, you can have the students research unemployment rates throughout Toronto, and then have them figure out why these numbers may be as high as they are-- does post secondary attendance matter? graduation rates? number of immigrants/ESL people in the community etc. By using integrated learning in your social studies classroom you enable students to think about social issues in terms of the bigger picture, what are the causes etc. In addition, as I stated in my earlier post, integrated learning allows students to put all of their skills together, and reduces the compartmentalization of education that happens so often in schools.