The Belief of the Interdisciplinary Curriculum Blog #3

Russell: Every teacher should teach English (4)

Civitano: I found this essay to be very insightful. The writer really showed me the history and profound moments that writing across the curriculum came about. As I am completely in agreement with this quote I had taken out of the essay I think it is a very simple yet bold statement. My educational background is in teaching Elementary school. This means that I had one entire class all day long; a class in which relied on me to them every subject. This to me had its advantages. I was able to bring English into all of my subjects, which is known as a teaching style called “interdisciplinary”. I was able to throw in writing assignments in the subject of science and history and have my students not even realized they are practicing their writing as they completed each assignment.
Sadly this does not happen as students get older. They wind up having multiple teachers a day only concentrating on that subject they are in that particular classroom for. This is where I believe that it is more necessary to have teacher meetings and discuss how an interdisciplinary curriculum can work. I think it is extremely necessary for when a teacher gives out a writing assignment to be able to pick out “bad writing”. That no matter what subject it is to be able to help your students when writing and making sure they are writing properly for their grade level.
If an interdisciplinary curriculum can work with younger grades I certainly believe that it can work with older grades also because that it how they are trained when they are younger. Teaching English through out each subject will open many doors for the students and they will succeed at a higher level. “Faculty members and administrators have long agreed that every teacher should teach writing.” (4). Now it is a necessary component as a future teacher for me to establish a mind frame for other teachers to teach English.

Williams: When items are aligned on the page, it creates a stronger cohesive unit (31).

Civitano: As I am reading this statement I am thinking back to the thought I had about English being taught in every subject. Though this sentence is not direct in what I was trying to say I saw it on a deeper level. Williams is trying to say that when things are placed together in a certain way it creates something strong. Well I believe that if all subjects are some what “aligned” with each other (as in a interdisciplinary curriculum) it an create something strong.





Pratt: I was delighted to see schooling give Sam the tools with which to find and open all these doors(1)

Civitano: This happens to be a very enlightening statement from a parent of a child in school. I believe that if teachers have passion in what they do and give that off to their students then those students will succeed in life. No matter what classroom or subject you are in teachers hold the keys to many unlocked doors for their students.

Gee: Players can hook multiple controllers into one video-game platform (178)

Civitano: This just justifies my statement even more by saying that there can be many players hooked up into one game i.e. many subjects intertwined into teaching one thing.
Gee always says “Meaning/Knowledge is distributed across the learner, objects, tools, symbols, technologies, and the environment” (211). No matter what subject you are in knowledge and meanings are being transferred from the teacher to the student and from student to student.



Reflection

When I was first asked to keep a blog I had thought it was going to be something that I have already been asked to do before and I was not looking forward to it. But then when I was introduced to the different types of blog writings I became eager to see which ones were going to work for my writing style and which ones were not. I am actually a big fan of quotes and quoting people.
When reading something I always tend to highlight or underline something I like that they said to try and identity with what the author was trying to convey. So I have to say I definitely enjoyed this type of blog style. It was interesting to get to see in a simple way what the author said and what my response was.
I would like to introduce this type of blog style to my future classes one day because I think it really gets your point across by backing your statement up with the authors words.