I work with primary school aged special needs children and
use an integrated method to teach many topics.
To be able to cater to all of the children’s individual needs,
background knowledge and interests I rely on a large interdisciplinary network
of individuals who hold specialist knowledge and with whom I must liaise
regularly. As discussed by Barton and
Smith (2000), integrated units of work need to reflect the real world to
children, to be authentic and reflect what they need to be learning. By integrating with many other people to get
ideas, knowledge, or to assist in running programmes, these units of work become
tailored to the individual students in my class.
One such unit of work I recently taught was created in
collaboration with the Speech Language Specialist, one other classroom teacher
and with the assistance of teacher aides for its implementation. The student outcomes we wanted to see were
based around individual communication goals ranging from pushing a button for a
pre-recorded message such as ‘my turn’, pointing to a series of visuals through
to 3 word verbal sentences. We also targeted
other social behaviours such as turn-taking, counting and measuring, as well as
sensory experiences. As cooking had
shown to be of high interest to all of the students we decided to use ‘baking
scones’ as our theme. We avoided motifs
(inappropriate work that is included just because it is about baking) by tailoring
the activity to each student’s level (Barton and Smith 2000). The same baking activity was repeated each
week for a term as repetition has shown to be beneficial to allow familiarity
then involvement and finally mastery of a skill. The next term we can use repetition with
variance – so using the same structure but a different recipe.
Our interdisciplinary topic was successful with all students
gaining confidence and ability in their communication while being highly
motivated by an engaging activity. The
success was made possible by the integration of all of the knowledge and
experience brought to the table by each of us.
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| Source: ARCLog (2015) |
The conceptual model discussed by Milligan and Kuban in
their blog post on ARCLog (2015) shows that there are three components that
must occur together to ensure successful interdisiplinary projects. Without one of these components a
collaboration may still work but will usually not be sustainable. In the example of our scone baking unit of
work, all staff had common goals and respected others strengths, we were all
enthusiastic and cooperative and we were also supported by senior management,
had a space and regular time set aside to do the work. In this way we had the three components of
the model and the work we have been doing as an integrated and collaborative
group has been sustained for over a year now.
I enjoy working with individuals from various different
fields as I value the unique experiences and qualifications they can bring to
making my teaching more effective. Even
individuals I have found challenging to work with have taught me something
which has improved my practice and therefore outcomes for my students. At the end of the day that’s what it is all
about, doing our best for the children in our charge.
References
ARCLog. (2015). A Conceptual Model for Interdiscipinary
Collaboration. Retrieved from http://acrlog.org/2015/05/14/a-conceptual-model-for-interdisciplinary-collaboration./
Barton, K. C., & Smith, L.A. (2000). Themes or Motifs? Aiming for coherence
through interdisciplinary outlines. The Reading Teacher, 54(1), 54-63.
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