Enliven Your Lessons with Cross-Curricular Techniques
Cross-curricular teaching, also called interdisciplinary teaching, refers to a master teacher's attempts to enliven lessons by lifting a particular concept from its narrow academic field and relating it to other academic fields. When you use cross-curricular teaching, you can turn on a light bulb in a kid's head because she just might envision the broad application and usefulness of a concept across more than one discipline.
Varying instruction is essential to effective teaching at all levels. Write lessons to appeal to different learning styles. This does not mean you must appeal to all learning styles every day. It simply means that by mixing things up a little bit, student attention will be less likely to waver.
You might, for instance, take advantage of the fact that many spelling books group words in a particular unit into themes — say, orchestral instruments or courtroom procedures or geographical features. And say that the theme of this week's words is the parts of an automobile's internal-combustion engine. You'll see words such as “combustion,” “carburetor,” “piston,” and “cylinder.” Latch on to that last spelling word, “cylinder.” Ask the kids, “Remember when we studied geometric shapes in math? Well, look at our spelling word ‘cylinder.’ Who remembers from math what a cylinder is?” Step back as hands shoot up enthusiastically. Accept the kids' remembered definitions (a tube, a soup can, a pipe, etc.) then explain, “Cylinders have real-world uses. The cylinders inside a car's engine hold the pistons, which move up and down to drive the car.” Draw a rough picture on the whiteboard. Your only problem from that point will be to limit the discussion to a few minutes when so many students will want to regale you with tales of their prowess as auto mechanics.
Moreover, consider how your literature lessons on Shakespeare's Romeo and Julietcan be related to your social studies lessons on slavery. When Juliet's father vows to throw Juliet into the street if she defies his command to marry County Paris, connect Juliet's plight with the concept of slavery. In Juliet's time, children were legally the slaves of their fathers. Are children still legally the slaves of their parents? Your students may yell, “No!” Yet look at Section 7120(a) of the California Family Code — a law typical of many state statutes: “A minor may petition the superior court of the county in which the minor resides or is temporarily domiciled for a declaration of emancipation.” Emancipationis a legal term meaning the freeing of slaves by a master or the freeing of a child by its parents, and renunciation of the right to take the child's earnings. In other words, children's current legal status does hearken back to the days of slavery. You've just related the concept of slavery across two fields, literature and social studies.
Your cross-curricular objective is to help kids make connections in their developing brains by relating concepts from diverse fields into integrated lessons. If you can help your students make countless mental connections across curricular areas, one of your charges just might make the connection that could someday cure cancer or colonize other planets. That's the kind of teaching that separates a master teacher from all others.
