Integration In Elementary Education

I have a memory of sitting in my elementary classroom doodling on a page on my desk and uninterested in what the teacher was teaching. Suddenly I look up from my doodles and realize that the teacher has moved on to a new subject and I have no clue what is happening. Some elementary school teachers move from subject to subject throughout the day and hope that the students are able to jump from subject to subject with the teacher. There is now an instructional method that allows the teacher to create lessons and connect the many subjects allowing the day to flow and the students are no longer jumping to catch up. This instructional method is Integration.
Integrating in the classroom is creating lessons and units that help students make connections …show more content…
In many classrooms, time is everything, each subject is isolated and taught only for a certain time during the day and then when the time ends the teacher will move on to the next subject. By moving on so quickly, teachers do not allow the students to process the information before moving on to the next lesson and subject. I know personally I need the time to process what I am being taught and am unable to move on to the next subject right away especially if I was having trouble focusing in this lesson to begin with. In “Teaching with the Brain in Mind”, Jenson talks about that our body and brain have periods of high and low energy throughout the day. (Jenson, 2005) These periods can increase and decrease the energy that is used with attention, interest and learning. These periods of energy come in cycles and these cycles are spread out through out the day and create a rhythm in the brain. For example, if a student has high amount of energy at 10 then his or her low will be at 10:45. Most students have a different brain cycle/rhythm that are special to them. (Jenson, 2005) The students will then have highs and low points spread through out the day that might be different from their peers. This rhythm in the brain supports the need for integration in the classroom. Integration allows for lessons to be longer during …show more content…
Scientists have found that emotions and memories have a large impact on how a student learns. The more intense the emotion the more likely we are to remember the experience that created that intense emotion. (Jenson, 2005, p. 56) So for a student to really remember what is being taught in the classroom, the teacher has to create an emotion that links to the information being taught like excitement and happiness. For a classroom that integrates this means creating a unit/theme that is gauged to the student’s interest. Now I know that one can not reach every student’s interest with just one theme but as a teacher it is my job to try and find a theme that will pull in the most students and create excitement to learn. From what I have seen in the classroom, when a student is excited to learn something then they are more likely to pay attention, work hard and remember the information. Just from creating my first unit about baseball that I was so excited about, I am able to remember things that I had not been able to like calculating batting averages. Now a teacher will get lucky when a student loves a topic but that might not always be the case. The key is for the student to get interested and find something that could get the student excited within the unit. For example, my second