Integrating Language Arts

and

Social Studies

  EDG 4376

Prof. Joseph D. McNair

 Please Read:

See Course Syllabus

This course is designed to develop your curriculum writing and lesson planning skills and maximize your interaction with educational technology.  You will be assigned articles to read for each class.  This frees up class time for enhanced student-teacher interactions. You are expected to :

  • "react" or "reflect" on each article or set of articles assigned.  A reflection paper is a short piece of expository writing consisting of a minimum of twenty-five word processed lines in a Microsoft Word document format. Please use Times New Roman or Arial fonts. Each reflection should have  the student's photograph attached. 
  • take all of your tests and quizzes on-line.  
  • submit all assignments as stipulated on the syllabus to webct as required.
  • If you have not done so already, you must purchase a copy of College Livetext.

As such you will be required to do or observe the following:

  1. Upload your reflection papers  on the dates due to Webct and keep a word processed copy (file) on a jump drive or compact disk).
  2. Write your reflections in your own words. Plagiarized reaction papers will be returned. All reflections and tasks must be submitted to Turnitin.com before uploading to Webct.  Reflection papers must be at least 25 lines for full credit. Any paper less than fifteen (15) lines will receive no credit.
  3. Reflection papers are due by the designated due date (see Webct assignment box). Uploaded reflection papers will be determined late according to the date they were received. You must keep a copy and a back-up copy of each reflection on a cd-rom disk or a jump drive.  
  4. All assignments and artifacts as stipulated by the syllabus will comprise part of the student performancel portfolio. This portfolio will be created and maintained in Livetext. All original written content for each assignment must be submitted to Turnitin.com before submitting as a completed assignment in Webct. Required assignments for this course include:

    Digital Curriculum Resource File (10c):    In this task, you will begin to develop a digital resource file including materials you have used as well as materials you may like to use in the future.  (ESE FSAC 3.2)

    Haikus, Hokkus or Couplets of Historical events: Students will create two (2) digital stories using images of historical events for which they will write and narrate a japanese haiku, hokku or couplet for each image. Digital story must be at least three minutes in length, with individual slides being no more than 20 seconds.. According to KEIKO IMAOKA "Japanese haiku have been traditionally composed in 5-7-5 syllables. When poets started writing English haiku in the 1950's, they adopted this 5-7-5 form, thinking it created a similar condition for English-language haiku. This style is what is generally considered "traditional" English haiku."

    The hokku according to Paperfrog.com, "... is a brief, unrhymed verse of three short lines that enables the reader to become one with a thing or event. It is not poetry as conventionally understood, because poetry usually means "dressing" up a thing or event with metaphor or simile, symbol or rhyme, or with cleverness or commentary--what we in hokku call the "coloring of the imagination." Hokku, however, is just the thing/event in itself, plain and unadorned."

    Couplets, according to Gotera, are any two lines working as a unit, whether they comprise a single stanza or are part of a larger stanza. Most couplets rhyme (aa), but they do not have to."

    Integrating Literacy Skills into Social Studies Unit Plans (8a): In this task the pre-service teacher creates two units consisting of behaviorist, constructivist lesson plans, with one that includes strategies to assist students in comprehending expository text through reading and writing activities.

    The product will be a unit with indivdual lesson plans, the directions for the content journal or learning log, reflections on the success of all, with a sample of a student’s journal/log. 

    The second unit is a book review lesson unit in the behaviorist or constructivist format on the novel, O Se Shango ( or an appropriate book that supplies this information) over three instructional days focusing on or more of the following:

    1. African cosmogony
    2. A child's naming ceremony
    3. Yoruba Bridal Poetry
    4. The bathing of the Yoruba bride in preparation for marriage

    The book review lesson unit will incorporate elements of the instructional plan found at http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=137

    Computer-Enhanced Management of Instruction (12a) : The preservice teacher will critique and evaluate one each: Social Science textbook, Social Science assistive software, Social Science interactive website, Language Arts textbook, Language Arts interactive website and  Language Arts assistive software at the level of your choice.

  1. You will submit a portfolio at the end of the term consisting of all reflection papers, articles, quizzes, and assignments on a CD-RW compact disk. It must be submitted on the due date.  The digital portfolio comprises the final culminating semester assessment. You will not pass the class without the portfolio.
  2. You may also upload whole or in part the course portfolio into your Livetext SOE portfolio.
  3. On the first day of class you will be registered into the WEBCT program so that you can take your tests and quizzes.
  4. You will have three (3) attempts to take each test and quiz.  You will be credited for the best score of the three (3) attempts. You will not be able to take a missed quiz. All quizzes mus be taken to pass the course.
  5. You will download the a copy of each of your completed quizzes (the best performance). (The best of your three attempts) and save the test to your floppy disks or your CD-RW.
  6. Your digital portfolio will contain minimally 26 reflection papers,class assignments, Florida Educator Accomplished Practices (FEAPs) Artifacts and seven (7) quizzes. 
  7. To receive an "A" in the class, you must attend 85% of the scheduled classes. Any grade earned will be lowered  if more than 15% of the classes have been missed. 
  8. You must be in class before fifteen (15) minutes past the start time has elapsed. You will not be admitted after fifteen (15) minutes unless you have received prior permission by the professor. 
Week One and Two

Register for Webct

In this unit, we will study and or review the following topics

  1. Definitions of Curriculum
  2. The historical forces that shaped the Core and Integrated Curriculum movements
    • The Common School Era
    • The Progressive Education Movement
    • The Social Reconstruction Movement
  3. Five perspectives influencing curriculum writing
    • Cognitive Processes
    • Academic Rationalism
    • Personal Relevance
    • Social Adaptation/Social Reconstruction
    • Curriculum as Technology
  4. Major Theorists and Personalities influencing the integrate curriculum movement.

Reflection 1: Read Mark Smith's Curriculum Theory and Practice and the Study Notes. Summarize your learnings on what is a curriculum.

Reflection 2: Why in your opinion is the progessive movement in American education so important to the social studies curriculum and the integrated curriculum movement?

Reflection 3: Identify the progressives on the table foud on the link "Progressives and their Contemporaries." Who on the table is not a member of the Progressive Education movement.

Reflection 4: Download the Word file " Important Personalities in the History of American Curriculum." In the box beside each personality, describe the

  • KEY COMPONENTS OF THEORY AND/OR
  • CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION
  • THE IMPLICATIONS FOR LEARNING
  • THE IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING:

Reflection 5: Kleibald has identified four interest groups that competed over seven decades for control of the schools through the curriculum. Humanists (1) (2) embraced “the systematic development of reasoning power” as well as the Western cultural heritage. Developmentalists (1) “proceeded basically from the assumption that the natural order of development in the child was the most significant and scientifically defensible basis for determining what should be taught” Social efficiency educators wanted schools to employ the “scientific management” techniques of supervision, accountability, precise measurement, and efficiency and to differentiate education according to students’ perceived needs, abilities, and probable life courses. Social meliorists wanted to use schooling as a lever for societal progress. Describe each interest group.

Readings

Weeks Three and Four

In this unit, we will study and or review the following topics:

  1. Integrated Curriculum Defined
  2. Frameworks, methodilogies and Terminology
    • interdisciplinary teaching,
    • thematic teaching,
    • synergistic teaching.
    • Integration models: Form One: Within a Single Discipline
      • Fragmented
      • Connected
      • Nested
    • Form Two: Across the Disciplines
      • Sequenced
      • Shared
      • Webbed
      • Threaded
      • Integrated
    • Form Three: Within and Across Learners
      • Immersed
      • Networked
  3. Levels of Integration
    • Developing cross-curriculum subobjectives within a given curriculum guide
    • Developing model lessons that include cross-curricular activities and assessments
    • Developing enrichment or enhancement activities with a cross-curricular focus including suggestions for cross-curricular "contacts" following each objective
    • Developing assessment activities that are cross-curricular in nature
    • Including sample planning wheels in all curriculum guides.
  4. Major theorists and personalities influencing the integrated curriculum movement.

Reflection 6: Select two (2) defintions of Integrated curriculum from from Kathy Lake's Article, Integrated Curriculum. Explain them both in your own words.

Reflection 7: Benjamin in Kathy Lake's Article cites the trends towards

  • global interdependence and the interconnectedness of complex systems,
  • the increase in pace and complexity of the twenty-first century,
  • the expanding body of knowledge, and
  • the need for workers to have the ability to draw from many fields and solve problems that involve interrelated factors.

How are each of these trends is relevant to the discussion of integrated curriculum?

Reflection 8: In "Toward an Integrated Curriculum," the writer asks" What does ... learner relevancy mean to the curriculum designer? How would you answer that question?"

Reflection 9: Franzie Loepp in her article, "Models of Integration" describes three models of the Integrated Curriculum. What are they? Describe them in your own words.

Readings

Weeks Five and Six

In this unit, we will study and or review the following topics:

  • Integrating Language Arts
  • Defining Literacy
  • Language Development in Children
  • Componenents of Language and Languge Use
  • Emergent Literacy vs. Reading Readiness
  • Models of Reading
  • A Balanced Approach to Literacy

Reflection 10: Many educators trace the rise in interest for integrating language arts to the success of the integrated curriculum in Great Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. British students were encouraged to communicate in writing and to talk about their writing. Some educators point back to the curriculum reform movement of the 1930s and to Dewey's discussion of meaningful learning as the beginning of interest in language arts integration (Lipson et al, 1993). In the United States, a close relationship between language and cognition was also found (Thaiss, 1984). However, while teachers generally favor an integrated approach, only minimal amounts of integration actually occur in their instruction (Schmidt et al, 1985; Allen and Kellner, 1983). Why do you think so little integration of language Arts occurs in current curriculum design and teaching practice?

Reflection 11: React to McGlothlins' "A Child's First Steps in Language Learning. How does his findings compare with Roger Brown's description on page 7 in your "Enhancing Literacy for All students" text book?

Reflection 12: What was the controversy between Phonics instruction and Whole Language Instruction? How different is it from Emergent Literacy vs. Reading Readiness conversation?

Reflection 13: What is a "Balanced Approached to Reading and/or Literacy Instruction? Reference appropriate articles and your textbook.

Readings

Weeks Seven and Eight

In this unit, we will study and or review the following topics:

  1. Definitions of Social Studies
  2. Position Statement on Social Studies by the National Council on Social Studies
  3. Curriculum Standards for Social Studies
  4. The influence of the Progressive Era on Social Studies Instruction
  5. The Controversy: Should History more than the other social sciences be at the center of the elementary social studies curriculum.

Reflection 14: It was stated in NCSS's position paper that "Teachers model fundamental democratic principles in their classrooms, discuss them as they relate to curriculum content and current events, and make them integral to the school’s daily operations (e.g., through involving students in making decisions that affect them). Think back on the case of Colorado teacher Jay Bennish who made a comparison between Bush and Hitler and criticized U.S. drug policy and capitalism without alledgedly presenting the other side. Now that Bennish has been reinstated with full pay, reflect on what he did against national social studies standards and the consequences.

Reflection 15: Should History be at the center of the elementary social studies curriculum or should anthropology, economics, geography, politcal science, sociology, the arts and humanities play significant roles. Reflect before answering on George Herbert Mead's essay in 1908.

Reflection 16: After reading the article, "Jerome Bruner and the process of education," reflect on how this educator may have influenced the new Social Studies

Reflection 17: Reflect on how you would approach unit and lesson planning using Problem-based learning, Inquiry Learning, or Webquest formats for unit and lesson plans.

Readings

 

Weeks Nine,Ten, Eleven and Twelve

In this unit, we will study and or review the following topics:

  • The Unit Plan
  • The Behaviorist Lesson Plan
  • The Constructivist Lesson Plan
  • The Inquiry Lesson Plan
  • Project based Learning
  • WebQuest
  • Teaching to Academic Standards

Reflection 18: Reflect on your experience of preparing your unit plan.

Reflection 19: Reflect on your experience of writing a behaviorist lesson plan

Reflection 20: Reflect on your experience of writing a constructivist lesson plan

Reflection 21: Reflect on your experience in writing an Inquiry lesson plan

Reflection 22: Reflect on your experience of preparing your Webquest.

Reflection 23: Reflect on your experience of writing a problem-based learning lesson plan

Reflection 24: Reflect on your experience of preparing your digital stories.

Reflection 25: What does it mean to you now to teach to academic standards?

 

 

 

Readings

Weeks Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen

  • Complete all assignments and field hours
  • All assignments and reflections must be completed to pass the class. There can be no omissions!
  • Prepare digital portfolio for submission. Your portfolio constitutes your final exam and should include all reflections, articles, quizzes and assignments.
  • Progam students must upload assignments into Livetext.

Reflection 26: Evaluate your experience in the class. Evaluate your professor.

 
 

Week Sixteen

Submit your portfolios. Upload all required assignments to Livetext. Well done!