The Importance Of Integrated Education

Humphries, Binder & Edwards (2011) address how integrated learning is promoted as a best educational practice and within an integrated curriculum, a “theme is selected and learning experiences are developed in two or more subject areas to meet standards-based objectives in each theme (p. 174). When transforming a traditional curriculum unit to an integrated curriculum, there are four areas we need to focus on to allow our integrated curriculum to be differentiated. These four areas provide options in the way to learn material, these include content differentiation, ways to access information, process differentiation, ways to understand concepts or ideas, product differentiation, showing what they learned, and learning environment (Ranaud, 2016). Our

Inquiry-based teaching: is the use of strategies teachers may use to actively engage students in the designing and implementing of investigative tasks, there are many different levels, from guided inquiry to open inquiry, each a different level of student centered instruction (Oliveira, Wilcox, Angelis, Applebee, Amodeo, & Snyder, 2012).

3. Collaborative instruction: having students work in small groups all engaged in a common task such as an activity or lab assignment, learning how to work together to meet a common goal (Oliveira et al., 2012).

4. Differentiating instruction: this includes changing up the different strategies and using those that appeal to students’ learning styles, allowing for flexible grouping and individualizing instruction for struggling students, having assignments that build off itself, changing questioning levels and individual projects (The Education Alliance, 2006).

5. Scaffolding: providing more guidance at the start of a unit or new skill, providing feedback specific to the students’ needs, and gradually the guidance is reduced while still receiving feedback, until they are then assessed on their learned skills by demonstrating what they have learned (The Education Alliance,