Meaningful Integration in Social Studies

1. Meaningful Integration in Social Studies

2. Positive Features of Integration • Enhances meaningfulness of what is taught; students make more connections • Saves teachers’ time • Teaches knowledge and skills simultaneously • Restores an emphasis on social studies in climate of standardized tests

3. Accountability • On the knowledge (ex. Content of a letter written to representative about legislation) • On the skills (ex. Descriptive writing piece about a trip to the White House) • On both (ex. In Language arts studying narratives and in Social Studies studying the American Revolution—writing biographies on key revolutionary figures)

4. Desirable Integration • Topics that naturally draw content from more than one subject. • Ex. Maps—geography and mathematics • Ex. Needs and wants—economics and mathematics

5. Desirable Integration • Skills learned in one subject are used to process or apply knowledge learned in another subject area. • Ex. Pretend you are a Native American on the Trail of Tears journey, write a series of diary entries describing your feelings, attitudes, and future expectations. • Ex. In a unit on the Middle East, identify biases and points of view in newspaper articles.

6. Desirable Integration • Enrichment activities that help to personalize content, make it more concrete, enhance learner curiosity, or add an affective perspective. • Ex. Using literature (Unit on wants and needs-read King Midas, Cinderella) • Ex. Integrating art or music

7. Undesirable Integration • Activities that lack social education goals • Ex. ABC order of state capitals, making vocabulary words into plurals. • Ex. Write a research paper on coal.

8. Undesirable Integration • Cost-Effectiveness Problems: Perhaps the focus is on other subject area goal rather than social education goal. Is there enough time or other resources? • Ex. Constructing houses from tropical regions • Ex. Create family members using paper plates • Ex. Role Play-participate in a parade to show how families celebrate • Ex. Collage and scrapbooking

9. Undesirable Integration • Distorts Content • Difficult or Impossible tasks • Feasibility Back

10. In Your Unit… • You must have objectives and standards in at least one content area other than social studies • You must have a plan to assess the objectives in the integrated subject areas.