Integrated
curriculum – a well-known term for some, and possible a scary term for others.
In EDUC 4P19, integrated curriculum is a key part of the course, and something
all of us students must learn to incorporate within our future teaching
endeavors! Now, this may be quite challenging in a secondary school setting, as
you must work with other teachers, other students, and a whole lot of other
possible scholastic issues, so let’s just look at this method within an
elementary school setting. In today’s society, math and science are the key
subjects for ‘life’; the subjects adults are promoting and pushing the students
to succeed in. However…not everyone can or will succeed in those subject areas.
This is why when creating an integrated curriculum unit, teachers should use
all sorts of different types of subjects, like art, languages, religion and
social sciences…and especially try to include health and physical education.
If you have read my blog before, you know how important
health and physical education is to me, and my advocacy for today’s society to
not diminish the importance of this once thought of “useless” and “pointless”
class. International news stations and reporters all state the same things when
it comes to childhood obesity rates, physical inactivity, and the laziness of
today’s society…it is all on the rise! In today’s society, most children spend
most of their day sedentary, and are not fulfilling the government’s daily
recommendation of physical activity. For some children, HPE class is the only
way for them to be physically active, as they live in a low socio-economic
status (SES)environment, where their parents/guardians cannot afford to enroll
them into extra-curricular physical activity programs. In Canada, public
education is free for all students to enroll in… so why are the schools not
ensuring that the students are receiving the basic needs in life!?
Incorporating HPE into an integrated curriculum unit is one solution, one idea,
to help encourage students to spend time being physically active, all while
enhancing student learning, and their self-motivation towards school and
learning.
In a previous class of mine, a group of my fellow
Concurrent Education students and I created a Physical Education lesson, that
incorporated a major social science topic…the importance of recycling, and the
3 R’s. We wanted to create a lesson where students learned the importance of
recycling, and how to be a better global citizen, all while ensuring their
daily physical activity needs were met. When we introduced this game to a group
of elementary school-aged students, they all loved the game! These students may
not have realized that this lesson was an integration of 2 subjects, for they were having a blast
running around the gymnasium, enhancing their throwing accuracy, all while learning
how important, and how fun recycling actually can be. After reading the text in
EDUC 4P19, I realized that through our integrated activity, we were enhancing
the students’ 21st century skills, such as culture and ethical
citizenship, and learning how to know, to do, to be and to live together.
Thus, it is important to not forget about HPE class, and
the importance of its curriculum. As one of my PEKN professors told us…“It is
important that we keep the PHYSICAL in EDUCATION!” Once again I am preaching
that Health and Physical Education is a very important and a key subject in the
education system. Physical education in schools help dictate students’
motivation of physical activity in their daily lives and the importance of
living healthy lives. How many children believe they are active, by taking part
in organized sport, but meantime they spend hours sitting in a car being driven
to a game or practice? Teachers need to learn how to incorporate more physical
activity into their integrated units and lessons, in order to further promote a
healthy lifestyle outside of school, one that will hopefully continue
throughout a person’s lifetime.
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| Picture from a PEKN 4P32 lecture |
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