Integrated Learning at Secondary?

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Integrate

What 4 fields could you cross to create original outcomes from new facts learned?

Brain based learning actively applies new facts to achieve innovative initiatives across traditional disciplines. Learners apply new content to craft original products or solve real world problems – rather than memorize facts for paper-pencil tests.

Yes, in spite of obstacles such as separated classes in secondary or university classes that would seem to prevent integration at upper learning levels.

My own integrative attempts began with an English – Social Studies – Math – Science meeting and ended with a dynamo student-led celebration of integration across these four disciplines. I’ve never looked back!

Celebration of Innovation

What innovation could your students lead in a celebration of innovation in your class?

Integration sets the stage to engage  wider learning communities on topics relevant to present and future issues. Learners are motivated to improve a current situation, for instance, or to address a gap in past paradigms.

Celebrations pose two-footed questions to engage both the interest of learners and the depth of relevant content. Did I just say two-footed questions? Yes, students love to chase observable ways that improvements emerge from new facts used to transform old problems into plausible possibilities.

Our challenges? Some classes – such as math – struggled at first to move their focus from isolated facts to meaning connections that tether life’s wonders to learners’ curiosity. Through collaboration, and learning from one another, we pulled together for results students and parents still talk about many years later.

Why integrate? Knowledge integrates organically in human brains, yet it’s sometimes separated and isolated by human created systems such as schools. Multiple intelligence tasks turn facts into problem-solving tools within integrated exchanges!

What would your group do to pull greatness out of stagnated traditions that no longer fit the fast-paced problems that students must learn to solve together?

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Created by Ellen Weber, Brain Based Tasks for Growth Mindset