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Integrative teaching strategies; what are they, and how do you implement them?

What are integrative teaching strategies, and how do you implement them? 

The success of the teaching and learning process is the instructors' resourcefulness credit. As the overseer of classroom educational activities, the teacher must select and create a technique appropriate for the type of learners present.

To be more creative, the instructor must consider individual variances based on facts such as age or student diversity in each learning cycle while making it more relevant.

Learners' learning methodologies, learning styles, preferences, and cognitive processes differ widely. As a result, they are employing integrative teaching practices and learning benefits students and teachers.

Integrative teaching strategies entail merging academic courses to educate around a particular issue, hoping that students will learn more when they understand how the topic ties to other curriculum sections.

We'll examine integrative teaching strategies and implementation in this piece. Let's first look at the foundations of integrated learning and a few classroom exercises that use it.

What is integrative learning?

Integrative learning is a notion that has existed for almost as long as organized education. It is a method in which learners use existing information and experiences to supplement new knowledge and experiences.

The idea behind integrative learning is that students take ownership of their knowledge, developing into critical inquirers capable of making meaningful connections between disciplines and applying critical thinking to real-world situations.

The method focuses on breaking down barriers across conventional disciplines and connecting them while focusing on the system as a whole rather than separate sections.

Active experience teaches students more than memorizing and retrieval of data. They are more likely to improve their language, arithmetic, and reading abilities by breaking down barriers across subjects and connecting them.

Integrative learning requires students to actively participate in projects that employ real-life scenarios and problem-solving abilities. Adding a social consciousness to the process prepares students to be more engaged and productive members of society than the standard curriculum.

For example, an integrated learning project engaging the community must pique the learners' attention. A teacher might inspire students to identify issues in their community that is significant to them, such as environmental issues.

Once the students have identified an issue that piques their attention, they may devise a strategy. They could collect data and prepare an in-depth report with charts and graphs to show their financing. That is, the knowledge they gain is immediately helpful to their daily life.

 What are the ways to integrate the curriculum?

The following are three categorical ways to integrate the curriculum:

Interdisciplinary integration.

Teachers structure the curriculum around cross-disciplinary learning in this integration strategy. They combine the shared knowledge across disciplines to highlight transdisciplinary concepts and abilities.

Multidisciplinary integration. 

focuses particularly on the disciplines since the methodology connects several topics around a central idea. With this strategy, teachers integrate abilities, information, or even attitudes into the standard curriculum. For instance, every academic area teaches pupils to respect the environment in certain schools.

Transdisciplinary Integration. 

Teachers plan the curriculum around the queries and concerns of their students while using the transdisciplinary approach to integration. Students gain life skills using disciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge in a practical setting.

What are the common integrative classroom activities? 

It is crucial to develop teaching strategies that engage students and give them a sense of agency. Insufficient classroom participation by students can result in disruptive behavior and low grades. Here are examples of integrative classroom activities:

Gamification.

Playing games during your presentation is an additional integrative activity for the classroom. It involves using games to keep students engaged and attentive. As a teacher, you should seek educational games that are fun and competitive while testing pupils' knowledge.

Use peer teaching.

Commonly, students like helping and learning from one another. Assign each group of pupils a task and divide the class into groups of three to five. Give student teams a chance to present their research and solution to the class. Allocate time for questions and answers following each session.

Incorporate technology in your instruction. 

The use of technology encourages student participation and improves interest. Instead of lecturing, you may convey knowledge via PowerPoint slide displays.

Additionally, use interactive lectures rather than textbook readings and let your students conduct internet research and create charts and graphs in Excel.

Reporting discussion.

After finishing their reports, the students discussed the various ideas they gave to their peers. Since students expanded on the topic during the discussion session, the instructor may add questions and clarify ideas to make the class more interesting.

Inductive-deductive instruction. 

It involves training students on topics ranging from the most specific to the most complex and allowing them to develop a technical understanding of the problem.

Introspection and assessment of oneself.

Students can rely on past experiences to respond to novel and challenging situations by self-reflection and self-evaluation. It critically assesses both its assets and shortcomings.

In other words, it connects one's present sense of self to their past and future selves in various contexts. Additionally, it enables pupils to demonstrate their potential for self-reflection and identity exploration.

Teaching via demonstration. 

The teacher may then transition to his lecture to give pupils an in-depth understanding of the approach or procedure presented after delivering or presenting the subject matter to learners.

Self-examination and self-reflection. 

Students can rely on past experiences to respond to novel and challenging situations by self-reflection and self-evaluation. It critically assesses both its assets and shortcomings.

In other words, it connects one's present sense of self to their past and future selves in various contexts. Additionally, it enables pupils to demonstrate their potential for self-reflection and identity exploration.

What are integrative teaching strategies?

Integrative teaching strategies are those where a teacher uses holistic lessons to illustrate links between disciplines rather than merely giving lectures and information out of context. Though typically associated with higher education, integrative teaching strategies have also been successful in K–12 settings.

In the conventional higher education setting, students frequently only absorb isolated facts and concepts through lecture-focused instruction due to the specialization of instructors and vast lecture hall surroundings.

Instead of focusing on the facts and theories in the field, educators can employ teaching approaches to connect those facts to other relevant topics more excitingly.

It can also entail putting knowledge and abilities into reality in the actual world, offering opposing viewpoints, and clarifying and demonstrating ideas and concepts in perspective.

In the case of younger students, more fundamental combinations, such as reading comprehension and writing abilities, are included in the science lesson to better interest students and enhance their general grasp of both scientific subjects and reading and language arts.

What are the key elements of integrative teaching?

The following are various elements of an integrative curriculum:

Differentiated instruction.

Within the unit, you must diversify teaching for your students. You can utilize various tactics such as flexible grouping, staged assignments, assignment commitments, or independent study.

Include both informal and formal evaluation.

Throughout your unit, you must incorporate both informal and formal assessments. This might involve anything from simple teacher observation to daily quizzes, assignments, homework assignments, unit testing, and standardized instruction like end-of-grade and end-of-course testing.

Harmonize curriculum with both state and national standards.

Your curriculum must meet both state and national requirements. This ensures that everything has a purpose when you are instructing. You must provide that the curriculum in the subject areas you are integrating overlaps.

Prioritize your curriculum. 

You must have a curricular focus and decide what subjects or areas of study you will include in your lesson. You allow integrated information across different research areas and have your courses circle a similar topic.

Linked of subjects or units. 

You should know that fundamental reading and arithmetic abilities are related to social studies and science. It is easy to understand that essential reading is fundamental in all academic areas.

However, students must also be able to use fundamental reading abilities in other subjects, such as detecting cause and effect, interpreting documents, and sequencing events or ideas.

Collaboration is essential.

It would help if you planned as a group effort to adopt an integrated curriculum. You can do this at all grade levels; by doing so, teachers share ideas on various subjects.

Suppose your school has a distinct instructor for each topic. In that case, those teachers can collaborate and share ideas from their disciplines to assist other teachers in developing methods to incorporate the information in their classes.

What are the modes of integrative teaching strategies?

The following are various modes of integrative teaching strategies:

Thematic instruction.

The method of instruction emphasizes establishing consistency across tasks by fusing ideas and techniques from different academic fields. It requires selecting a unit topic and giving everyone in the group the opportunity to contribute to the integration process.

Then, choose the primary notion that will act as a helpful integration lens for the research and brainstorm some crucial information or generalization that learners would want to derive from the study to enable the analysis toward the necessary understanding.

You must develop a scoring guide to evaluate the performance assignment, and you may use various evaluation techniques to monitor development throughout the unit.

Focusing inquiry.

With the use of questions, in-depth investigation, and the creation of new knowledge and comprehension, students engage in inquiry-based learning, which is an instructional method.

Students collect and analyze data, develop and defend ideas, offer solutions, and produce technological and artistic works that showcase their ideas and demonstrate their learning.

In the focused inquiry method, the teacher asks students open-ended questions to get them thinking and to direct them to questions that are interesting to them, can be answered, are objective, or are not personal.

Content-based instruction.

This integrated approach bridges the gap between language and topic matter courses and focuses on learners' academic needs and interests. It emphasizes the value of practical and real-world skills.

The more opportunities there are for students to use the subject knowledge and abilities they bring to class, the better they will learn the language and the subject matter. This approach is suitable for language instruction that incorporates the discussion of topics or homework from subject-specific classes.

What are the advantages of integrative teaching strategies?

When it comes to successful learning, integrated teaching styles perform best. Those that undergo integrative teaching methodologies outperform students in regular classrooms in terms of academic accomplishment.

Center the school on the learner. 

Integrative teaching strategies allow students to explore whatever interests them, with the learner guiding what they learn.

Give it greater significance. 

Every teacher hopes that everything they teach students will be used in the real world, especially if pupils face questions in math classes. Students that use integrated learning have a greater understanding of the context.

Make content authentic. 

Math should seldom emerge in the actual world as straightforward, defined issues with single, perfect answers. Instead, uncertainties and expectations abound in the real world.

You may use the strategy to have students study and investigate the topic in various circumstances with different lecturers.

Increase learner appreciation.

Students frequently believe they do not need to grasp something to appreciate it. Connecting content via integrated learning is one technique to help students enjoy and hunger for what they are learning.

Repetition of information.

An additional reason an integrated curriculum is essential is that it allows for a more significant repetition of knowledge than teaching courses separately. If kids hear this information only once, it may pass in one ear and out the other.

By taking the material taught in one topic in the morning and reinforcing students' minds about this information later in the day, they are far more likely to keep it.

unique learning style. 

Every student in the classroom is unique because each student has a unique learning style. As a teacher, you are likelier to reach more kids appealingly if you use an integrated curriculum.

While it is nearly challenging to individualize classroom education to the extent you would like, employing an integrated curriculum moves you closer to educating each student in a relevant and meaningful way.

Learning does not happen in a vacuum. 

Teaching is more than just passing on knowledge from teacher to student; it is also a way of learning for both the instructor and the pupils.

Learning does not occur in a vacuum where pupils absorb knowledge without comparing it to their schema.

Students are continuously assaulted with information and ideas from their surroundings; assuming that they do not permeate their perspectives on life would be naive.

Making the connection.

Making links to real life or between disciplines, skills, or knowledge is essential to an integrated curriculum. An integrated curriculum combines academic areas, activities, and real-world information to provide students with a more rewarding and practical learning environment.

This may be as simple as assigning a math project that incorporates the characters in that week's reading narrative, or it could be as sophisticated as setting a theme for the entire year and designing courses around it.

Students' connections between what they learn in school and the knowledge and experiences they have previously had play a big part in grasping ideas and retention of learning since they are not taught in a vacuum, free of outside contact and information.

How do you implement integrative teaching strategies?

After going through the advantages, how do you go about doing it? How can you gain the support of instructors concerned about missing standards or dealing with material they are unfamiliar with?

Make time for planning.

Curriculum integration is only feasible if instructors choose to participate. Organize teacher discussions that allow them to meet, plan, and decide on specific subjects and classes of interest.

You must create an agenda tailored to your students' requirements. Consider pupils struggling with a topic to guide your strategies and the unique themes for integrated education and related issues.

Analyze distinct sets of standards. 

Even though standards differ by state, subject, year, and sometimes even school, instead of viewing an integrated curriculum as a barrier to completing standards, consider standards a template for discovering methods to integrate curricula.

A more modest approach would be for instructors to examine how they generally demonstrate applications of the standards for which they are accountable and develop new ways to leverage the same applications jointly.

Instead of technology instructors spending an entire course on one standard, they can include the same tech standard in projects across many classes.

Create themes.

Integrating disciplines should allow what students and teachers can learn—quite the contrary. One strategy may be to generate broad themes that all instructors can support in various ways.

The themes can sometimes take the shape of broad inquiries that do not require a clear answer within the confines of any given subject. Consider the following questions, which allow for individualized, nuanced responses: What impact has technology had on society?

Choose your assessment techniques.

If you're going to mix subjects, be sure to combine evaluations. When establishing a new teaching method, it is critical to ensure that measuring learning is consistent.

After all, you want data-driven and credible answers on whether your integrated curriculum works. While students may still be required to take state tests, seek opportunities to compose essays, develop presentations, and deliver oral reports that demonstrate the depth of comprehension and cover several disciplines.

What are the disadvantages of an integrated curriculum?

There are several reasons both for and against this technique of teaching. Some of the known as anti to incorporating the approach:

Collaboration amongst teachers.

An effective integrated curriculum includes contributions from instructors from several disciplines, such as math, science, and social studies. Coordinating timetables and reaching a consensus among a diverse group of professors is typically challenging.

Teachers are hesitant.

Teachers are hesitant to change what they do in the classroom to introduce something that does not guarantee outstanding outcomes.

Conclusion.

We use integrative teaching strategies to help students evaluate their learning by building on their earlier experiences. These enable students to connect their experiences to the knowledge and skills they obtained during their course. This improves student employability forming a practical effect of applying integrative learning strategies in the learning session.