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Content Knowledge in Interdisciplinary Curriculum

Haylee Caldwell

Regent University
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Introduction

The ability to teach content knowledge across the curriculum is a highly important skill

of any teacher. This is because often, content like Social Studies and Science do not typically

receive a great deal of instructional time throughout the school week. One important way a

teacher can teach content throughout the school day is by integrating it into other areas of

instruction. I did this with my fourth-grade class as we learned about the moon in science, I also

taught small group reading with a nonfiction book about the moon.

Rationale

For my first artifact, I chose a worksheet I did with the students for a whole group science

lesson. The goal of the unit on the moon was for students to be able to explain the moon’s

movement and position and how that determines what we see from the earth[ CITATION Vir193

\l 1033 ]. For the students to understand the varying phases of the moon due to its position

relative to the earth and the sun, I showed them a poster which worked as an anchor chart that

hung throughout the unit. I also drew various models of the Earth, moon, and sun and discussed

which phase the moon was in for each. I worked through each phase and as we discussed each

phase I pointed out something unique about the phase to help us remember it. After a phase was

discussed the students filled out the respective phase on their worksheet. Essentially, the first

artifact is to show how I taught the content during the content portion of the lesson and to

provide some of the background knowledge the students had going into the small group reading.

My second artifact is the lesson plan that I used which integrated content into reading. At

the time I was teaching the small group reading we had been focusing on plot and theme in

reading fiction texts. Since the moon book was nonfiction I explained to the students what the

main idea is in a text and had them decide on the main idea of this book. I had the students read
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each passage twice which utilized the close reading strategy which is the strategy that students

must read a text multiple times to fully comprehend and understand the information[ CITATION

Tim \l 1033 ]. After identifying the main idea, I discussed some of the vocabulary words with the

students breaking them down on a whiteboard by identifying the prefixes and discussing the

meaning of each word. I then had the students use the vocabulary words in a sentence. Following

the creation of their sentences, I had each student tell me something they thought was cool or

important from what they read without looking in the book as an exit ticket. This formative

assessment allowed me to gauge where each student was in their understanding of the text.

Reflection

Overall, teaching content across the curriculum is important. Reading is an essential part

of the curriculum across the grade levels. Students should be reading to learn things in every

subject which creates a beautiful opportunity for teachers to use the reading time to teach content

lessons. In an article discussing the importance of integrating multiple subjects across the

curriculum, authors Bintz and Ciecierski[ CITATION Bin17 \l 1033 ] suggest that teachers use

books that contain literary elements yet also discuss important aspects of the content. While the

book I used for this lesson was nonfiction I was still able to stretch the content from science to

reading as I had the students identify the important concepts from the book which is a highly

needed reading and comprehension skill.

The first artifact is important because it introduced the content to the students in an

interactive way as I had them discussing with me the different phases of the moon as we did the

worksheet. The worksheet also has facts to describe the varying phases of the moon which is an

element of literacy. The facts that the students learned in the whole group lesson provided an

easy movement into the small group reading because the students were already learning about
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the moon and were excited to continue that learning during the reading block for that week.

Overall, integrating content across the curriculum is very important in education and literacy

provides a wonderful way to do so. Through nonfiction texts, I was able to teach students in a

small group more about the moon than they were required to learn in science which extended

their learning. I was also able to use the small group reading to discuss vocabulary with the

students and to create an enriching discussion of the text.

References
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Bintz, W., & Ciecierski, L. (2017, February 14). Hybrid text: an engaging genre to teach content

material across the curriculum. The Reading Teacher, 71(1). International Literacy

Association.

Shanahan, T. (n.d.). Common core: close reading. Retrieved from Scholastic:

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/common-core-close-

reading-0/

Virginia Department of Education. (2019). Science standard of learning 4.8 a.