Raisin in the Sun:
This play is about the "American Dream" and it focuses on the struggle of an African American family. To help students relate to the text I will attempt to incorporate concepts from both Math and History.
Student will plan a family budget. The financial burdens of the family cause a lot of the conflicting in the play. In order to give students the opportunity to fully sympathize with those struggles I would like to see them deal with family finacnes for a week. They can use their own families as a basis and try to survive with the given budget (I will give each family a budget appropriate for their family size [this will not be based on their families income as Cal is in an affluent area]). Students will have to consider the main necessities (food, cable, pg&e, gas, insurance, etc.).
Students will learn about the history of the Civil Right Movement. This is relevant because it will allow students to understand what it was like for African Americans and comprehend the Youngers struggle to reach the "American Dream". I would use an interactive power-point and handout to describe the movement. Students will first be broken up into groups of five. They will use 1-2 smart phones per group to look up information on their assigned topic (i.e. Brown v. Board of Education, Bus Boycotts, Emitt Till, etc.). Students will make a poster that will display the what happened, a visual, and the significance/impact of that event and present it to the class (may count as Art). I will then do a comprehensive overview of the movement via PPT.
The challenges of interdisciplinary teaching/learning are being able to use multiple disciplines. I would be hard pressed to use Science in my English class. I think it is second nature to connect History and English. How could I teach Night without going over the history of Germany and the rise of Hitler? How could I teach LOTF without talking about WWII? To Kill a Mockingbird, Raisin in the Sun, All Quiet on the Western front are all text that need a little History lesson. As far as other subjects I think it would be difficult for most teachers to find the time to meet with other teachers and find ways to connect P.E. or Math to an English class. The value of interdisciplinary teaching/learning is providing a way for students to connect the dots. How awesome is it for students to learn about WWII in History and see those same concepts reinforced and discussed in English while they are reading Lord of the Flies? I believe it makes it easier for students to retain information when they have that information reinforced across disciplines.
Interesting finds on Interdisciplinary teaching:
http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/ictt_xrpt.htm
http://fod.msu.edu/sites/default/files/teaching_excellence.pdf
Responded to:
http://teacherrayford.blogspot.com/
http://courtneylyonsmc.blogspot.com/
http://mait-melinar.blogspot.com/
Eghosa- I completely agree with your assertions about how teaching literature and history go hand-in-hand; so much of the front-loading for any novel involves giving the context of the author or character's lives and times. This background information is so crucial to helping students think critically and interpret works meaningfully. I have also taught "A Raisin in the Sun" and although I am TERRIFIED of math, I do remember trying to piece in a few budget ideas- I bet that I could try harder to incorporate some "real world" math context or statistics into the context of other novels (for example, in discussing the Great Depression when we are are studying Steinbeck or calculating the costs of modern technology during our Transcendentalism unit). Thanks for the food for thought! -Sasha
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