Week 5 - Moving Forward With a Concept

In researching best practices in interdisciplinary learning, I have decided that building this IDU around a concept, in addition to the theme of the Bay of Fundy, will help give more structure to the project. Rebecca and I did some brainstorming, and narrowed it down to two possible concepts : Relationships and Change.

Our next step was to think about what curriculum outcomes and/or units could logically fit into those concepts.

As we were thinking of ideas, we kept coming back to the idea of Relationships. Change was a strong contender, but we think there might be more substance in the concept of Relationships.

I am feeling slightly discouraged because I don't think I will be able to do this project on a large scale next year (see my last blog post for the reasoning behind this thought). I plan to develop something for implementation in my own classroom. Doing this sort of pilot project could lead to more involvement from others in the future, and it is the type of education that I feel strongly about.

My next steps will be to plan the final goal of the project, and then to look at specific lessons and activities that could lead toward that goal. I will need to look at specific curriculum outcomes from all of the subjects I teach, and decide which ones align most closely with both the concept of Relationships and the overall theme of the Bay of Fundy.

Weeks 3 & 4 Passion Project 2018 - A Few Bumps in the Road

I am still as excited as ever about developing a new Interdisciplinary Unit, but I have hit a few snags over the past two weeks and I need to take a moment to think through what I can do to overcome those issues.

The first issue is one of timing. I am working under the assumption that timetables for grade 8 teachers at my school will remain more or less the same next year. That being said, there don't seem to be any "good" days on which to run an IDU. A "good" day is one in which it would be possible to run the IDU without impacting any specialist classes such as Physical Education, Family Studies or Technology Education.

Timetable for 2017-18
I teach Math, Français, Mode de Vie, ELA, Health & Art

Rebecca (the other teacher who is really passionate about the idea of an Interdisciplinary Unit based around the Bay of Fundy) and I have been trying to problem solve this issue, and we are running into difficulty because the project itself requires the input and cooperation of so many other teachers. It's not something that we can do on our own, and finding time to meet with such a large group of teachers is challenging. Time to meet is not the only challenge, we also need most teachers to be as excited about the prospect of a new IDU as we are, with the understanding that getting something like this off the ground takes a lot of work. People are at various points in their careers, in their personal lives, and in their passion about project based learning, and those differences can create a barrier to working together to create something new.

Moving forward, I want to look at the possibility of running this IDU on a smaller scale, so that I could do it within my own classroom without impacting anybody else. It's not as all-encompassing as I would like, but doing a pilot project on my own would mean I can work out some of the bugs before proposing it to the entire grade 8 team of teachers.

Links and Resources - Passion Project

This post will be a place to collect links and other resources that I use or that I find inspiring while working on the Bay of Fundy Interdisciplinary Unit for my passion project.

Making interdisciplinary projects work - concepts are key

Resources from Education to Save the World

Week 1 & 2 - Passion Project 2018 - Inspiration for an Interdisciplinary Unit

I have chosen to devote my Passion Project time to developing a new Interdisciplinary Unit for grade 8 students. Over the past 15 years, I have been part of the grade 8 Entrepreneurship Interdisciplinary Unit. I love this project, because students have a chance to work collaboratively, to problem solve, and to see that subject areas which are typically taught in isolation do not have to be separate and distinct from one another all the time. We don't stop using our language skills, just because the bell rings to signal the end of Language Arts class!

Next year, I am planning to implement a new IDU, on the theme of the Bay of Fundy. A colleague and I presented the Entrepreneurship IDU to middle school teachers in May 2017, and the process of putting together the presentation inspired us to start thinking about building a new IDU for our own students. We live in an area with a lot of biodiversity, the highest tides in the world, and a rich history - we fell in love with the idea of developing an IDU based on our geographical location.

To begin this process, I will need to identify the curriculum outcomes from each subject that could be combined, to develop a final task, and to decide on a timeframe and framework that would be feasible within a school day.

This endeavour will be collaborative with other grade 8 teachers, but I plan to lay a lot of the groundwork myself so that we are ready to implement the new Interdisciplinary Unit in October 2018. I'm excited, and ready to get started!