English Journal - Volume 86, Issue 7, 1997

Describes three recent scientific theories (chaos theory, complexity theory, and fuzzy logic) and shows how they serve as metaphors for understanding English teaching.

Describes how an English teacher and an art teacher collaborated to create a combined curriculum based on interdisciplinary projects for sophomore students at their high school. Describes planning the course and using a theme; gives some examples demonstrating how ideas about interdisciplinarity became realities in classroom practice; and discusses why this interdisciplinary teaching was so effective.

Shows how photography and photographic processes can be used as a metaphor for describing writing and writing processes and, thus, can be a useful teaching tool. Discusses subject, focus, arrangement, and style. Describes how a writing teacher can use all this as a means of illustrating various aspects of the writing process.

Details an interdisciplinary video project used by an eighth-grade English teacher to tie the flora, fauna, forces of nature, and historical events in the book “Prairie Songs” to what students are learning about in social studies and in science. Describes goals and resources for the project, student questions, researching topics, writing a script, videotaping, and student reaction.

Describes a high school English teacher’s first year collaborating with math, science, and history teachers in a connecting-the-curriculum program. Describes how the author’s first semester of teaching English within this interdisciplinary framework lacked coherence and was not successful and how his students helped make the second semester more coherent.

Describes an interdisciplinary unit that brought the Civil War to life for 11th-grade students in a team-taught unit that highlighted student-driven response to reading. Describes use of a 19th-century essay supporting slavery, Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” “Huckleberry Finn,” Civil War poetry and other writings, and student projects based on the autobiography of Frederick Douglass.

Describes two interdisciplinary high school courses team taught by English and social studies teachers: American Studies and World Studies. Discusses format and structure of the courses; presents a basic outline of each course; includes a description of a typical day in the courses; and offers examples of student projects. Offers hints and recommendations for teaching such courses.

Describes two double-period humanities courses taught in the 10th and the 11th grades (based on the rigorous New York State Regents standards) that interweave literature, history, political philosophy, art, historical documents, and personal experience. Describes the 10th-grade course that includes Western civilization and the 11th-grade course that includes United States history.

Argues that literature of nature teaches teenagers about life and home. Describes how personal narratives, essays, and fiction that look at human interaction prepare students for life. Focuses on three main elements important in establishing strong connections: landscape, community, and work.

Describes how, as a result of the Rivers Curriculum Project (an interdisciplinary program using river environmental themes and coordinating activities in several disciplines), students in a high school English class wrote and illustrated children’s books, shared those story books with young children, and shared their story books at the yearly Clean Water Celebration.

Describes how the popular TV show “X-Files” was used as a model to develop an in-depth semester-length project, in which 10th graders integrated history, math, science, and English as they worked in investigative teams to develop evidence dossiers, memos, and presentations following stringent requirements yet allowing students considerable freedom in how they worked on their topics.

Describes a college-level introductory integrated science course for non-science majors, called “The Natural World: Explorations in Science,” that was laboratory-based, exploratory, and writing intensive, and that was team taught by four teachers from different fields. Discusses elements that make such interdisciplinary teaching possible and the benefits of such teaching.

Describes the author’s experiences teaching interdisciplinary English in three different configurations: one-woman English/social studies integration; one-woman English/mathematics integration; and two-women English/math/social studies integration. Discusses activities, successes, and failures of each, and shows how all three contribute to her belief that interdisciplinary English is a worthwhile pursuit.

Describes how a multicultural unit was added to a high school American literature course, noting that this necessitated selecting a large number of new books for the school library. Discusses goals of the multicultural project and its main interpretive assignment. Describes briefly selected works by four new African American writers and four new Asian American writers.

Presents three brief articles written by teachers that 1) describe a collection of approaches that utilize newspapers and magazines as the “excellent teaching tools they are“; (2) plunge students into critical analysis through the use of advertisements in magazines; (3) present ideas on how to teach students to create writing prompts from news stories.

Offers three brief articles on three teacher-initiated programs that involve collaboration with colleagues and students: in music/arts production by fourth and fifth graders; an independent study program in which middle school students wrote grant proposals; and an activity in which seventh graders mapped a timeline of Earth history and geologic history onto a single calendar year.

Presents the 1996 Honor List of eight books of interests to young adults published in 1996 that were chosen as “est books” by three or more other sources. Discusses the books.

Available in print version only.

Available in print version only.