Curriculum Integration

Curriculum Integration shows students that everything in our world is connected. Therefore, students understand the information better. Curriculum integration allows students to have more opportunity to relate the curriculum to their own lives. Curriculum integration gives an answer to students that ask “why”, “why are we learning this”, “why are we doing this I won’t need to know this when I am done school”. It answers these questions, as students realize that they need to know what they are learning, because they will need to know it when they are not in school anymore. Curriculum integration creates a further enrichment of the subject content that would not have been presented in the normal curriculum, so students can understand the curriculum more in depth. It increases interest and positive learning environment, thus increasing student’s grades, participation, attendance, self-direction and interest in school. Curriculum integration also helps students with their self-development and provides intrinsic motivation, so they have a reason for learning the information. These are the positive accepts of curriculum integration, but the cons of curriculum integration are that it could take a long time to implement properly. The teacher would have to create an entirely new curriculum. Teachers may not have a lot of time to plan. Units are intensive, as you go more in depth into the material. Teacher’s collaboration may be difficult, as it is a lot more team teaching, which may be hard to meet with other teachers.

Here is a video were two teachers integrated their math and science curriculums:

Students understood the information better, because they realized why something was a certain way. The teachers worked together to explain both curriculums. The students understood the concepts better as they saw why they were learning something and they would be able to use that information in the real world and in their future jobs. I think curriculum integration is great, but it may be hard for new teachers to do this. I think this is something that can be a goal for the teacher to build up to and think about doing in their classroom. I think curriculum integration is good, but it should not be forced, as if it is forced then the subject content may not match and not make sense to the students. I think I would try to use curriculum integration in my classroom when I become a teacher, as it can make learning more interactive for the students and provide a reason for learning.