Some ideas about integrating

We are currently in the stage of preparing for next year's first topic on "food". On its own such a suggestion is merely a context which could quickly descend into what Beane refers to as multidisciplinary integration. But we may have found a way to make it a source of some really critical and creative thinking that doesn't lead teachers to fear about "what they'll teach" on the first day if they are to totally leave it to the students. What we are going to do, and especially me as the Social Studies teacher, is spend 2-3 weeks making "food" problematic. I need to keep probing students so they can make a tentative response to the question "why would we want to learn about food?" or "Why is it socially significant?". I intend to collect some materials that might disrupt or "perturb" their thinking; I need to try and make what is familiar strange, with the explicit purpose behind it all of giving them ideas to launch their own inquiry. Some ideas of what I could use to do this:

• Howard Kunstler's stuff on the importance of living locally

• Morgan Spurlock's Macdonalds documentary

• A guest speaker such as someone from the green party talking about GE

• Some readings/data of world poverty, the food crisis

• Some excerpts from the book "The ethics of what we eat"

Perhaps the first homework session is to have students talk to their parents and grandparents about why you might learn about food and they write ideas on some pieces of paper which go up onto a "problem wall".

What is going to make this successful is the cooperation we have among the four core teachers. Once we have given them some ideas about why you might study food we will create "inquiry" slots in the timetable where they can work on it. This is where we have struggled so far this year though. An inquiry is quite tiring and we all worry that the students might not cover the areas we are required to teach. We hope to get around this by having timetabled "skills" or "new ideas" sessions. For example, the maths teacher might say to the class "today (or this week) I am going to teach you 3 different ways to do a graph". Or they might respond to their own observations, (or even better the students' request) with a more teacher led lesson. The students would then be encouraged, with that new knowledge, to think about how they could potentially use that in their inquiry. They don't have to though. As a social studies teacher I might take a concept or theory from an Achievement Objective, perhaps something like globalisation and introduce this as a useful concept to be applied, if it works within the context of a specific inquiry. The point is that we are feeding them new ideas in order to deepen their inquiry.

The overall intent of this particular unit of work is that they they have to curate an exhibition using the model of a science fair. Invites are sent to their parents and they can come in for an hour and eat organic nibbles after school and see what their kids have produced. This is a positive form of extrinsic motivation. Someone would need to design the invitation, we would need to think about what the exhibition is called, we would need to go to an exhibition and think about what makes a good one, how does text flow with images and with an artifact.... This could all be done in the "new ideas" sessions and could involve some great collaboration with the English and Social Studies teacher.