Some special education students misuse their sexuality to achieve popularity, flaunt sex-related language to gain attention, or demonstrate social naivete. To help these students categorize their real-life relationships, two consultants devised the circles concept. Six color-coded concentric circles reproduced on a life-sized floor mat clearly…

For fear of blaming the victims, educators have been reluctant to endorse strategies requiring hard work from students as a condition for learning. U.S. students are working far below their potential because they experience no reason to do otherwise. The United States one of the rare developed nations without a high-stakes exit examination for…

In developing a national curriculum, ways must be found to challenge students and teachers, preserve initiative, and maintain democratic control. President Bush's New American Achievement Tests will consist of a system of examinations to be administered by individual states or clusters of states. Conversion should embody a grand,…

When teachers provide opportunities for thoughtful learning, students will demonstrate the insight resulting from deep understanding of subject matter. Three methods of teaching for understanding include teaching with mental models, coaching for understanding performances, and teaching for transfer. These approaches also help reconnect the…

The intellectual disciplines comprising the traditional curriculum are actually territorial spaces carved out by academic scholars for their own purpose. Although middle-level educators have been engaged in reform efforts for two decades, the interdisciplinary, integrated curriculum is still rare and a working definition of a middle school…

Organizing a school staff to deliver a core curriculum has historically taken three forms: the all-school theme approach, interdisciplinary teamwork, and the block time or self-contained class models. The ultimate in student-centered integrative curriculum is the unstructured core approach, which involves teacher and student cooperation in…

Unlike traditional instruction, which emphasizes basic skills mastery as a gateway to more challenging coursework, the interdisciplinary, thematic, team-based humanitas program at Los Angeles Unified School District stresses that all students can learn from a conceptual approach. The key is teacher collaboration. Attendance rates have improved…

Representing English, history, geography, science, graphic arts, intermediate special education, physical and health education, and environmental studies, six Ontario (Canada) teachers cooperating on an integrated curriculum project found that their "separate" subject areas came together naturally in a theme approach to teaching. Success meant…

The editor of ASCD's "Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation," Heidi Hayes Jacobs, has worked with hundreds of schools to discover best curriculum planning practices. She finds doing too much at once and forcing subject overlaps the biggest obstacles to interdisciplinary curriculum planning. Moving to standardized curricula…

To develop an interdisciplinary curriculum, a district needs a field-tested action plan. This curriculum mapping plan's four phases--conducting internal and external action research, developing a proposal, implementing and monitoring a pilot unit, and adopting the program--can be accomplished over a three-year period. Procedures are described in…

In a recent project involving two midwestern high schools, vocational and academic teachers participated in a project promoting interaction and mutual reinforcement. Innovative matches were found in agriculture and biology exchange classes, a technology outreach program, a study of world protein distribution, and a furniture marketing project. The…

Past reforms have done more to stabilize an obsolete science curriculum than provide insight and guidance for realizing a new vision of science teaching. The 1990s reform movement demands integration of school subjects: a conceptual convergence of the natural sciences, mathematics, and technology with the social and behavior sciences and…

Recognizing that traditional science disciplines are no longer isolated from each other or from other intellectual fields, 16 Los Angeles high school teachers cooperated to restructure their science courses. To replace the "layer-cake" curriculum, the Scope, Sequence, and Coordination Project promotes teaching all secondary students a "slice" of…

To ensure scientific literacy at graduation, teachers at Littleton (Colorado) High School created Direction 2000, a two-year Integrated Science course to introduce students to the life sciences, physical sciences, and earth science. Graduation is based on demonstrations of what students actually know and can do, rather than on accumulated credits.…

An inventive first grade curriculum using a school construction project illustrates the fundamentals of the Mid-California Science Improvement Program, based on Susan Kovalik's integrate, thematic learning model. This cooperative learning program does not ask teachers to add yet another subject, but makes science the ingredient uniting all other…