View Content #21813

by Stephanie Knight, CASLS Language Technology Specialist

I, like many of my language teaching brethren, went into teaching Spanish because I loved Spanish. I loved studying the etymology of words and was so excited by grammar that I practically squealed when talking about it. In many ways, I was fascinated by Spanish because I found it fascinating. Unfortunately, that circularity of reasoning was not always embraced by my students. They needed something else to see the relevance of learning a world language. This need was particularly evident with my students who had no intention of ever living or working outside of their current neighborhoods.

Luckily, I was placed in a middle school that was seeking approval to be an International Baccalaureate World School my first year of teaching. Concurrency of learning is demanded by the International Baccalaureate, and after attending my first training, I began to realize all of the many ways that using a cross-curricular lens to think about my language teaching would positively impact my learners. I engaged in the intentional planning of units with cross-curricular links, and reflecting on this experience has led me to articulate seven tips for educators seeking to imbed cross-curricular connections into the classroom.

1. Begin planning by thinking of a concept that allows students to make interdisciplinary connections.

Concept-based learning is enduring and helps learners to make connections outside of the classroom. The concept of identity serves as a great example. While I found most of my high school freshman to be less than enthusiastic about learning adjectives in Spanish, I found them all to find relevance in using adjectives to explore perceptions and how perceptions impact one’s identity. That the learners were studying genetic traits in biology further compounded the relevance of using descriptive language.

2. If you are unsure of how to pick a concept or about how subjects connect, work with a team of educators from other disciplines.

The best planning session I ever did for cross-curricular units unintentionally involved a math teacher and a science teacher. I was working in the school library and struggled to articulate how my content related to any concepts. I wondered out loud about the connections, and they asked me to share what content we were covering and why that content was important to know beyond its alignment to state standards. Immediately, they began to see connections to their own subject areas and helped me to articulate mine.

3. Design an end of unit assessment that is authentic and allows learners to explore the concept that they created.

To allow learners to fully consider a concept and draw cross-curricular connections, educators must design authentic assessments that allow for functional language use and proficiency building. Multiple choice tests and form-focused assessments do not adequately allow the learner to make the enduring connections that are indicative of long-term learning.

4. Identify the various learning targets incorporated within an assessment and use those to engage in backwards design.

The first time that I tried to embed concepts and cross-curricular learning into my course, I helped learners to explore them with intention for a week or so and eventually reverted back to my older practices. Thus, even though my learners were engaging in functional language use, the importance and validity of that use began to be less clear. In order to avoid such a situation, one must articulate the learning targets that are related to the targeted concept in the final unit assessment and engage in intentional backwards design so that learners practice those targets in the appropriate context throughout the course. Just as with selecting concepts, when selecting these targets, it is beneficial to work with educators from other subject areas to understand how the targets relate to the content of their courses.

5. Provide for a class-wide experience in which learners can develop a connection with the concept or concepts at play so that they may begin to make connections to other subject areas.

Concepts allow learners to create personal and cross-curricular connections with classroom content. However, all concepts were not created equal in this respect. You may find that some learners are not as well-connected with a concept as you would like them to be at the unit’s inception. In order to prime these learners for thinking regarding cross-curricular connections, create some sort of shared experience for your entire class that can serve as a springboard for subsequent classroom tasks. This experience could be playing a digital game together, reviewing data sets, or the review of a source text that has the potential to spark cognitive dissonance and inquiry within learners.

6. Use the L1 to empower the L2.

Learners need to observe, evaluate, and practice the L2 in realistic contexts in order to build their language proficiencies. However, particularly for novice learners, setting aside intentional class time to explore the concepts and cross-curricular connections in the L1 is recommended. The time lost working in the L2 is well worth the increased understanding and motivation that arises in learners after giving them time to process in the language that most adequately allows for that processing to occur.

7. Give yourself time to think and to plan.

Clearly, a great deal of thinking goes into planning cross-curricular units. Educators must be intentional in protecting this thinking time. This time may occur during regularly-scheduled planning time, over the weekends, or during school breaks. I personally found the summer to be the best time to engage in most of this thinking time and set aside two days a week to think and plan. Other colleagues have found success by engaging in the time at specified points throughout the school year.

Good luck to all wonderful educators working hard to implement cross-curricular learning in the classroom. Your efforts are well worth it!