OTT 82: The Magic of Hands-On Integrated Units in the Classroom
Today I have a special guest Amy Mezni from Teaching Ideas 4U. And we are going to talk all about the magic of hands-on integrated units. Hope you stick around.
Amy shares information on integrated units. You may be thinking, is that a thematic unit, is it an intradisciplinary unit or is there a difference? Amy's going to explain the differences to us, so that is really helpful.
I met Amy because we both are presenting at Whole teacher Eclecticcon 2020, which takes place at the end of July. July 27 Is the start date. This conference is going to be an amazing experience. It is focused on the whole teacher and all parts of teaching. We very often talk about focusing on the whole child, we now are focusing on the whole teacher so every part of teaching will be addressed. We can sit back in our pajamas or by the pool and really take in this intentional focused professional development. It's also available for a full year, so you don't have to listen to all 60 sessions at once. That's a lot of sessions! You can kind of pick and choose what is appropriate for you and what's going to motivate and inspire you before the new school year. You can then save a couple for the next month and have some throughout the school year. You can have professional development all year, that would be pretty cool, wouldn't it? So I hope that you will join us at Whole teacher EclecticCon 2020.
Immediately upon enrollment, you will receive my free download of podcasting exit tickets for distance learning. So I'm really excited to offer that. Not to mention, you also receive over $125 worth freebies when you register for Whole teacher EclecticCon 2020. So that's really cool. It is a $38 training and basically, you more than triple your investment for the materials that you receive. So hopefully you will join us. So let's get on with the show.
Highlights from the Show:
14:22
That was one of the criticisms of early integrated units like the thematic units. I don't think it was true for everybody doing thematic units. But one of the research criticisms that came out of it was that people would have an activity they like to do. So they would build the unit around that activity versus building the unit around the standards that had to be taught standards. And that was kind of what happened with thematic units and why they went out of style there for a while because, you know, it's like oh, I like to make paper mache globes that take a week, when it really is not worth a week of class time spent.
15:16
There's actually different ways you can do integrated units. And I think teachers are actually doing them more than they realize, because there are thematic units, there are also multi-disciplinary units, and then there are intra disciplinary units, which I think a lot of teachers do.
20:13
But we have to realize that our kids come to us from a variety of experiences. And we have kids who literally never get to go to the beach. They don't have the money. They don't have cars. They don't have that even though it's so close. And we say it's only so close. They don't have parents that can take them. And so I think we have to remember that for a lot of kids. We are their gateway to a bigger topic.
27:40
I think what happens in elementary, the teachers who either aren't like us weren't comfortable in social studies, like they teach it so they can say they taught it, but it's not engaging. It's not relevant and the kids dump it. They don't remember any of it. They don't remember it. But there are issues with textbooks and I think one, they can be very biased. You look around the country and there's a lot of people that don't want to talk about politics and education. But there's a lot of politics in education.
33:11
When you open yourself up to integration, it does take more planning. And so what I say during my presentation, I'm going to just reiterate it here, especially if you are not an idea person, because I think it's easy when you're an idea person. But I always had to have my fall guy who said, you can't get all that done. Like you need that out. If you're somebody who has trouble coming up with the idea is don't try and remake the world in one year. Pick one unit per semester that you're going to slowly move away that gives you time where you don't feel so much pressure to be remaking everything at once. It's a great idea to take it one idea at a time. My issue is I always made myself more work because I was always like, let's do something new.
35:30
You know, what I mean, when I say you can make it so much more relevant to kids, and you can make it where they can relate to it. Yeah, a lot of history seems so unrelatable because it feels like so long ago or like, how does and what does the revolution have to do with me, you know, but when you find a way to show how it can connect to them today,it makes a huge impact. ~Amy Mezni
Links Mentioned in the Show:
Teaching Ideas 4U on Instagram
The Teacher’s Lounge (A Facebook Group for Upper Elementary Teachers)
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