. pooja_gandotra@yahoo.

com

INTEGRATED METHOD OF TEACHING

INTRODUTION

IT refers to the method of teaching wherein various styles are incorporated to each other in a way that should boost the learning experience that is to be imparted. IT Allows students to make natural connections between content areas without being limited by artificial boundaries. In doing so, students construct their own meaning and develop skills they will need in the workplace. Integrated Method involves one or all of the following: Examining a topic from different points of view (disciplines) Placing greater emphasis on projects Encouraging students to recognize the relationships among and between concepts Using thematic units as organizing principles Flexible schedules Flexible student grouping

MEANING

B. Shoemaker defines an integrated curriculum as education that is organized in such a way that it cuts across subject-matter lines, bringing together various aspects of the curriculum into meaningful association to focus upon broad areas of study. It views learning and teaching in a holistic way and reflects the real world, which is interactive. An integrated curriculum is to teach a strategy based on the premise that learning is a series of connections. The integrated curriculum can be beneficial to teachers and students, using theme teaching, projects, and units to cover a variety of material and effectively teach many concepts and skills. This approach allows children to learn in a way that is most natural to them. Teachers can create a good deal of their curriculum by building webs made up of themes of interest to the children, with benefits for all. These benefits include more adequate coverage of curriculum, use of natural learning, and building on children's interests, teaching skills in meaningful contexts, more flexibility, and an organized planning device
Integrated teaching units work for children and teachers, and we can look for ways to "integrate" new ideas with our already effective teaching units. These integrated units allow us the opportunity to make sure children are learning relevant information and applying that knowledge to real life scenarios Curriculum studies with regard to integration in the teaching and learning refer

to a way of planning and organizing the instructional program so the discrete disciplines of subject matter are interrelated in an appropriate design that brings about effective learning

Creating Integrated Learning in Classroom

Integrated units can be planned around a book theme, an author study, or any topic that has interest for young children. Many skills, including the benchmarks for each state, are easily integrated in a theme study. Webbing out ideas in a semantic map is an excellent way to brainstorm activities. It just makes more sense to start with a topic that is motivating to children, and then move to activities and skills. The connections can be made among different subject areas, including math, science, social studies, and literacy as well as art, music, dramatic play, and physical activities. These connections help children in the way they learn best - through meaningful experiences. This also allows for children to learn through their preferred learning modalities. Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences can be easily addressed through the implementation of a Integrated approach. Learning centers and hands-on activities are easily implemented through a theme approach. Games and reinforcement activities can be added to appropriate centers. These will jump start children's interest and keep them motivated while they learn important concepts and skills. Portfolios and performance-based assessment compliment the Integrated learning .

For example, an ocean portfolio can be created that documents progress the students made during the ocean unit. Scrapbooks about various unit themes can be created to show what skills and concepts were mastered during the units. These make excellent assessment devices for children to share with their families. Examples of thematic units frequently used in the preschool or early elementary classroom include topics that interest young children such as nursery rhymes, fairy tales, dinosaurs, space travel, vacations, animals, pets, the ocean, camping, and other subjects that motivate the teacher and children to read, write, map, count, problem solve, and think creatively. Book authors and quality children's books also make excellent springboards for creative theme studies. Benchmarks for a particular age level, including skills and concepts, can be taught under the umbrella of an exciting theme topic.

Features Of Integrated Method

Fragmented Description: The traditional model of separate and distinct discipline, which fragments the subject area. Example: Teacher applies this view in Math, Science, Social Studies, Language arts OR Sciences, Humanities, Fine and Practical Arts. Connected Description: Within each subject area, course content is connected topic to topic, concept to concept, one year's work to the next, and relates ideas explicity. Example: Teacher relates the concept of fractions to decimals, which in turn relates to money, grades, etc. Nested Description: Within each subject, the teacher targets multiple skills: a social skill, a thinking skill, and a content-specific skill. Example: Teacher designs the unit on photosynthesis to target consensus seeking, sequencing, and plant life cycle. Sequenced Description: Topics or units of study are rearranged and sequenced to coincide with one another. Similar ideas are taught in concert while remaining separate subjects. Example: English teacher presents a historical novel depicting a particular period while the History teacher teaches that same period.

Shared Description: Shared planning and teaching take place in two disciplines in which overlapping concepts or ideas emerge as organizing elements. Example: Science and Math teachers use data collection, charting, and graphing as shared concepts that can be team-taught. Webbed Description: A fertile theme is webbed to curriculum contents and disciplines; subjects use the theme to sift out appropriate concepts, topics, and ideas. Example: Teacher presents a simple topical theme, such as the circus, and webs it to other subject areas. Threaded Description: The metacurricular approach threads thinking skills, social skills, multiple intelligences, technology, and study skills through the various disciplines. Example: Teaching staff targets prediction in Reading, Math, and Science while Social Studies teacher targets forecasting current events. Integrated Description: This interdisciplinart approach matches subjects for overlaps in topics and concepts with some team teaching in an authentic integrated model. Example: In Math, Science, Social Studies, Fine Arts, etc. teachers look for patterning models and approach content through these patterns. Immersed Description: The disciplines become part of the learner's lens of expertise: the learner filters all content through this lens and becomes immersed in his or her own experience. Example: Student or doctoral candidate has an area of expert interest and sees all learning through that lens. Networked Description: Learner filters all learning through the expert's eye and makes internal connections that lead to external networks of experts in related fields.

Example: Architect, while adapting the CAD/CAM technology for design, networks with programmers and expands her knowledge base.

ADVANTAGES
Integrated instruction also allows for authentic assessment students have a chance to work with multiple sources of information, thus ensuring they are receiving a more inclusive perspective than they would from consulting one textbook Integrated teaching units involve a group of correlated activities that are designed around topics or themes and cross several areas of the curriculum. They provide an environment that fosters and encourages process learning and active involvement of ALL students (Fisher, 1991). They build on students' interests and prior knowledge by focusing on topics relevant to their lives. They help children relate to real-life experiences and build on what they know. Integrated units provide one of the best vehicles for integrating content areas in a way that makes sense to children and helps them make connections to transfer knowledge they learn and apply it in a meaningful way. Integrated units also address the diverse learning styles of the students we serve.

Other benefits of utilizing themes in the early childhood classroom include:

Learning in-depth factual information Becoming physically involved with learning Learning process skills Learning "how to learn" Integrating learning in a holistic way Promoting group cohesiveness Addressing individual needs The results of the program increased attendance rates, and improvement in standardized test scores, especially from students with the poorest test results schools have a more positive work climate, parental contact is more frequent, teachers report a higher job satisfaction, and student achievement scores in schools that team are higher than those that do not team Pumerantz & Galanto find that interdisciplinary teaching allows for students to, Proceed at a pace commensurate with their interests, skills, and experiences Integrated instruction helps teachers better utilize instructional time and look deeper into subjects through a variety of content-specific lens. teachers can better differentiate instruction to individual student needs.

DISADVANTGES

1). Unnecessary repetition:- Due to integrated method of learning there is unnecessary repetition of the content. Which take lot of time to complete the whole curriculum in the respective duration of time. 2). Disjointed approach to teaching; 3). Confusion in student's mind due to difference in opinion which in turn leads to 4). Disunity and hence the subject as a whole is never grasped. This discourages students from learning and they get disinterested in applying the knowledge achieved into practice.

How To Use Integrated Method In Classroom Teaching

There are several ways that a teacher can use this method in classroom teaching.Some of them are;-

Demonstrating Demonstrations are done to provide an opportunity to learn new exploration and visual learning tasks from a different perspective. A teacher may use experimentation to demonstrate ideas in a science class. A demonstration may be used in the circumstance of proving conclusively a fact, as by reasoning or showing evidence. The uses of storytelling and examples have long since become standard practice in the realm of textual explanation. But while a more narrative style of information presentation is clearly a preferred practice in writing, judging by its prolificacy, this practice sometimes becomes one of the more ignored aspects of lecture. Lectures, especially in a collegiate environment, often become a setting more geared towards factorial presentation than a setting for narrative and/or connective learning. The use of examples and storytelling likely allows for better understanding but also greater individual ability to relate to the information presented. Learning a list of facts provides a detached and impersonal experience while the same list, containing examples and stories, becomes, potentially, personally relatable. Furthermore, storytelling in information presentation may also reinforce memory retention because it provides connections between factorial presentation and real-world examples/personable experience, thus, putting things into a clearer perspective and allowing for increased neural representation in the brain. Therefore, it is important to provide personable, supplementary, examples in all forms of information presentation because this practice likely allows for greater interest in the subject matter and better information-retention rates. Often in lecture numbers or stats are used to explain a subject but often when many numbers are being used it is difficult to see the whole picture. Visuals that are bright in color, etc. offer a way for the students to put into perspective the numbers or stats that are being used. If the student can not only hear but see what is being taught, it is more likely they will believe and fully grasp what is being taught. It allows another way for the student to relate to the material.

Collaborating Having students work in groups is another way a teacher can direct a lesson. Collaborating allows students to talk with each other and listen to all points of view in the discussion. It helps students think in a less personally biased way. When this lesson plan is carried out, the teacher may be trying to assess the lesson by looking at the student's: ability to work as a team, leadership skills, or presentation abilities. It is one of the direct instructional methods. A different kind of group work is the discussion. After some preparation and with clearly defined roles as well as interesting topics, discussions may well take up most of the lesson, with the teacher only giving short feedback at the end or even in the following lesson. Discussions can take a variety of forms. Collaborating (kinaesthetic) is great in that it allows to actively participating in the learning process. These students who learn best this way by being able to relate to the lesson in that they are physically taking part of it in some way. Group projects and discussions are a great way to welcome this type of learning.

EXAMPLES
For example, an ocean portfolio can be created that documents progress the students made during the ocean unit. Scrapbooks about various unit themes can be created to show what skills and concepts were mastered during the units. These make excellent assessment devices for children to share with their families. Examples of thematic units frequently used in the preschool or early elementary classroom include topics that interest young children such as nursery rhymes, fairy tales, dinosaurs, space travel, vacations, animals, pets, the ocean, camping, and other subjects that motivate the teacher and children to read, write, map, count, problem solve, and think creatively. Book authors and quality children's books also make excellent springboards for creative theme studies. Benchmarks for a particular age level, including skills and concepts, can be taught under the umbrella of an exciting theme topic.

CONCLUSION The integrated teaching curriculum has been around in early childhood education for years. Teachers have long used children's literature, topics of interest, and projects to motivate children and teach them the necessary skills and concepts to be successful in school and life. With all the new emphasis on test scores and isolated skill development, it's important to blend the old with the new rather than completely tossing tried and true methods. Integrated teaching still has a significant place in our early childhood classrooms. Integrated teaching works for teachers and children, and is an excellent medium for bringing children and skills together. We must send children home at the end of the day with increased skill development, but also knowing they learned something meaningful and helpful at school