Running head: CONTENT KNOWLEDGE IN INTERDISCPLINARY CURRICULUM 1

Content Knowledge in Interdisciplinary Curriculum

Arrykka S. Jackson

Regent University

As required for EFND 595: Field Experience and Student Teaching

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Content Knowledge in Interdisciplinary Curriculum

Students need time to practice their reading and writing skills, yet students also need to

learn how to investigate. Discovery speaks of childhood, yet in school discovery has gone.

Through inquiry-based, interdisciplinary exploration, children interact and learn better. Using

science and reading together allows adequate time for development of reading and science.

[I]ncreased time for K-5 science would provide more opportunities for students to actively

explore their world, design and conduct investigations, construct evidence-based explanations,

and expand their knowledge through related literacy practices, (Romance & Vitale, 2012). In

this unit, the students learned more about adaptations through writing and scientific inquiry with

objectives as set out by the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL).

Rationale for Selection of Artifacts

My first artifact is a book that a student made as his final project of the unit. I gave

students a choice as to what they could do to show me what they learned about animals, their

adaptations, and how that relates to the interconnectedness of nature as in SOL 3.6 (Virginia

Department of Education [VDOE], 2010b). Because one of the focuses of this expression of the

projected, I worked with the child on sentence structure. I also showed the student how scientist

communicate their findings through writing. I had the student practice using scientific

vocabulary. Students learn about nonfiction texts, yet this gave them an opportunity to produce

nonfiction text. In producing nonfiction text, we also had to look at the features of nonfiction

text. This all supported the language arts writing objectives, SOL 3.9a,b,c, &f (VDOE, 2010a).

My second artifact is a journal page that the students filled out as we did our investigative

discovery activity. The students had to answer questions at the beginning, the middle, and the

end of the activity. Students were given an owl pellet to investigate SOL 3.5 (VDOE, 2010b). At
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first I did not tell them what an owl pellet was. I had them use their senses to see if they could

figure out what it was without opening it. I told them that it was an owl pellet. I asked the

students to describe what they noticed and to make a prediction as to what they think they would

find. The students then filled out the first part of the worksheet. Then I asked the students to open

the foil the pellet was wrapped in and make observations about the outside. I asked them to use

vocabulary that they think a scientist would use to highlight English SOL 3.2e (VDOE, 2010a).

This was difficult, although we did talk about adaptations, it was difficult still. Lastly the

students dissected the pellets and wrote about what they found and whether their predictions

were correct. Students used sequencing, making inferences and predictions, and communicating

about nonfiction activity as in English SOL 3.6b and k (VDOE, 2010a).

Reflection on Theory and Practice

That was a well-planned unit and the students had plenty of chances to communicate their

writing. Romance and Vitale (2012) explain that students do not have enough exposure to

science literature and more importantly the discovery and inquiry-based aspects are generally

squashed. They propose that students need to have a science curriculum that contains inquiry-

based instruction while also providing the proper reading and writing elements in a standard

curriculum. They talk about how increasing the science time while including the reading and

writing aspects of the curriculum throughout the year will allow students to grow in their reading

comprehension as well as their science background. This practice allows students to do more of

the things that we would like them to do. Students need to be challenge and need to discover and

explore. I have found that integrating science and language arts has been successful and

engaging.
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It has also been shown that English Language Learners (ELLs) benefit from an integrated

science and language arts curriculum. ELLs who go through the integrate curriculum

outperformed the ELL who did not, yet also performed just as well or better than their native

English-speaking peers (Tong, Irby, Lara-Alecio, & Koch, 2014). This is relevant because I have

quite a few students who are ELLs or who speak a language other than English at home. Taking

this approach with the integration of science and language arts provides a more equitable

situation in teaching science. Science has difficult language because of the nature of its

specificity. Learning English as well as learning specific science vocabulary can be daunting and

overwhelming, yet integrating reading will improve reading comprehension and writing skills

(Tong et al., 2014).

In general, students need to communicate their thoughts and ideas. A very pertinent area

in which kids have little practice of communication is in the science curriculum. The lack of

usage of science vocabulary in ordinary language causes science to be more difficult than other

subjects at times. As a classroom teacher, I have noticed the importance of creating an

environment conducive to learning. A cross-curricular approach allows students to excel at many

levels.

If knowledge is understood as a recursive network of relationships between information,

concepts, and ideas that are themselves a network of further relationships, then all

learning is interdependent in the sense that what is learned about one part of a topic

affects what is learned about every other part (Nuthall, 1999, p. 336).
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References

Nuthall, G. (1999). The way students learn: Acquiring knowledge from an integrated science and

social studies unit. The Elementary School Journal, 99(4), 303-341. Retrieved from

http://0-www.jstor.org.library.regent.edu/stable/1002174

Romance, N. R. & Vitale, M. R. (2012). Expanding the role of K-5 science instruction in

educational reform: Implications of an interdisciplinary model for integrating science and

reading. School Science and Mathematics, 112(8), 506515. doi:10.1111/ssm.12000

Tong, F., Irby, B. J., Lara-Alecio, R., & Koch, J. (2014). Integrating literacy and science for

english language learners: From learning-to-read to reading-to-learn. The Journal of

Educational Research, 107(5), 410-426. doi:10.1080/00220671.2013.833072

Virginia Department of Education. (2010). Virginia English standards of learning curriculum

framework 2010. Retrieved from http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/frameworks

/english_framewks/2010/framework_english_k-5.pdf

Virginia Department of Education. (2010). Science standards of learning for Virginia public

schools. Retrieved from http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/science

/2010/k-6/stds_science3.pdf