From theme parks to survivor island

The 8^th graders are huddled around giant graph papers scattered with colorful shapes. The shapes are the rides and shops they’ve designed for their amusement park. They’ve imagined each feature, calculated area, perimeter, and entrance coordinates. Next, they will apply physics concepts to design and model their rollercoaster.

A group whose theme is video games is discussing a big blank rectangle on their graph paper. It’s their last ride, and they can’t agree on a name for it. They’ve designed Sonic Drop, Rocket Rollercoaster (which they describe as “exhilarating”) and several other rides but they are stuck on this last element.

This larger team of students has a group of four core teachers for English Language Arts, social studies, math, and science. The teachers work in pairs to teach interdisciplinary classes that bring the essential concepts of each discipline together in their design of student work.

For the amusement park project, students are using knowledge and skills they have learned throughout the year to design the park. Their graph paper design had required many different math skills. Next up, groups will be using ideas from science – force and motion – for their rollercoaster designs and models.  

I think the project is a good experience. It’s fun,” says one from the video game crew. “You put in all you learned for the whole year.”

His teammate offers another opinion, “I kind of hate it, because it makes me think!”

They all laugh. They will need their collaboration and communication skills to land that last ride.

“The whole idea is that this is more real world and authentic when we do school this way,” says Lindsay Leet, science teacher. “My husband, a scientist, never does science in the absence of math…and he writes reports and communicates with people. He is interdisciplinary at his job. Any opportunity we have to do this with kids helps them be more prepared for that realistic future.”

Team approach

This group of teachers has been working with this team of 7^th and 8^th graders all year – the yellow team. 

They have “Inquiry” which is a blending of science and math, and they have “Humanities” which is a blending of English Language Arts and social studies. Sometimes they have subject specific lessons but as much as possible they try to overlap.

“It might be as simple as making math problems that have examples that are from science or the science topics that they're learning,” says Lindsay. “But it also extends into large performance assessments (like the amusement parks) that involve pieces of both math and science at the same time.”

English Language Arts and social studies is Humanities - a natural mix because English doesn't necessarily have topics. The class reads, writes and speaks focused on the social studies topics for 7^th and 8^th grade.

“In 7th grade, it's American history for social studies, so when we're in the Civil War unit, we're reading about the Civil War. We're looking at Civil War era poetry,” says Shelley Anderson, English Language Arts teacher. “It's a little trickier in 8^th grade when it's Geography but we've found some ways to make some really good connections.”

With subjects combined, the team works within bigger blocks of time throughout the day. This allows for lessons that take a longer time or a shorter time to flow more naturally than a more time-bound schedule.

“Because we team teach in the same room for a lot of the day, we use our time and space flexibly,” says Lindsay. “We might be together for part of it and then go to an adjoining room for a bit and then come back. There are generally just fewer transitions for our kids. It's all just interconnected.”

“I survived Survivor Island”

The interconnectedness of the learning really pushes students. It also provides the platform for doing high interest, engaging work and projects.

The second trimester for 8^th grade Humanities is one big unit called Survivor Island. The geography components include learning about different landforms, different climate regions, and weather patterns. While students learn the geography concepts, they are working on summarizing skills in English Language Arts by reading stories of people who have survived in different climates.

“There's a survival story of somebody who crashed in the Andes Mountains. There’s a survival story of somebody who got stuck in the ocean,” says Shelley.

When they have the basics, students are tasked with developing an island with landforms, climate regions and weather patterns. They make a population density map based on what they've learned about where people would live on the island.

“An example is that people live by rivers. People don't live on top of tall mountains where it's too cold. . . that type of thing,” explains Shelley.

When their islands are complete with data, students write a report to the United Nations. The scenario is the discovery of a new island. Students write an official report to document whether or not people could live on the island using their essay writing formula.

“Then we do our speaking skills,” says Shelley. “The students create a presentation and give that speech like we're a mini UN conference. By the end of the trimester, we worked on our reading our writing and our speaking competencies alongside our social studies competencies.”

Differences and advantages

This way of teaching and learning has some clear advantages for this team. One is time savings.

“If you think about Shelley's example where they're doing their English Language Arts around these social studies topics, you can actually save a little bit of time doing that,” observes Lindsay. “They can choose exactly what they want to focus on and spend a majority of their time on that.”

Because the teachers spend so much of their time planning and preparing together, they get to know each other’s curriculum.

“I really know the math curriculum quite a bit,” says Lindsay, “which means that I can always reinforce it so the students are getting extra math in science just because I know what's going on. I think when we're siloed in our individual subject areas sometimes that piece is lacking.”

There’s also a clear advantage for individualizing support.

“Because we’re comfortable with each other’s content, we can work a little more individually with kids when we need to,” says Shelley.

Students are also able to see connections between skills and subject areas more clearly.

“We used to hear a lot more – ‘why do I care if my paragraph is right? It doesn't matter, this isn’t a writing class.’ Now, everything is writing class,” says Shelley. “They’re seeing a little bit more how this skill I'm developing in math has an application in science. This skill I'm developing in language arts has this application over here.”

This way of learning – for teachers and students – is amazing. It also takes a lot of teacher time and effort.  

"I don't ever want to not team teach or integrated teach, and it is time consuming,” says Shelley. “We just have to acknowledge that.”

The benefits of interdisciplinary learning and team teaching are worth it.

“I just love the stuff we’ve come up with together,” says Lindsay. “It is so much better than what I would have ever come up with on my own.”

On this day, the Inquiry class is splitting into two rooms. Some groups stay to work on their park designs. Some groups head to the science lab to work on their rollercoasters. In the lab, they quickly get to work with foam tubing, tape, various sized boxes and stands and marbles. They raise and lower their tubing and shift angles to observe the effects on the marble – and their future rollercoaster.

As Lindsay works her way around the room, she asks each group questions. “Why did making the loop shorter help? Did it work better when you started higher or lower? Why is that?”

After they have their designs, they will write their claim, evidence and reasoning. Then, they’ll go through the steps of making a model. They’ll draw and label each component, note the relationships and create descriptions.

One group cheers as their marble lofts a break in the track, lands on the other side and continues to the track’s end. In the corner, the horror themed team is working on a severe loop. Across the room the fantasy team (plenty of wizards, unicorns, and dragons) has a large drop and curve going. There is a general buzz in the room as teams discuss different approaches and discoveries.

This energy around the learning has been one of the most rewarding things for teachers – especially seeing students volunteer their time.

We have been so amazed by the number of students wanting to come in at lunch, working at home, or giving up outside play time to work on this project. We are loving it! Lindsay Leet, science teacher