CAPTION PART 1: This entry provides a detailed account of the Multidisciplinary Model in

the creation of a curriculum integrated lesson plan between Ms. Stacy Barrow the H.O.D. for

Art and Ms. Karyn Corbett (Myself) a teacher for the Disciples; Biology, Environmental

Science and General Science. This account would highlight the creation of a Lesson Plan

which incorporates objectives from both Biology and Art as the lesson plan and task

(Creation of a poster) is meant for the form three (3) year group. This is the last lesson under

the unit Conservation Biology which allows students to also embark on a summative form of

assessment (end of topic) and includes a HFLE component since each group posters would be

donated to a named primary school to be used as educational additions.

Curriculum Integration Report:

This report is a detailed account of the first time I engaged in the creation of a Lesson which

focuses on curriculum integration. Curriculum integration refers to making connections

across disciplines, real life, as well as skill and knowledge based. This lesson targets a

multidisciplinary model with specific interest on theme and topic development. [ CITATION

Sus04 \l 11273 ] Multidisciplinary Units and lessons suggests that certain disciples come

together to investigate a particular theme or issue. The focus of this model is on a specific

scope and sequence where the question sheds light on complements the identifiable

disciplines (Art and Biology). This lesson took into consideration objectives, pre-requisites

and materials related to the disciplines of Art and Biology as seen in the attached lesson plan

and the instructions for the summative task, where the instruction of the task incorporated

components from Art and Biology. A rubric was also designed between the two teachers with

interest on the two identified subjects. This lesson was extremely student centred and it

allowed high student engagement, cooperative learning and group collaboration since they
had to collaboratively and try to complete or come close to the completion of this Task. The

entire lesson was designed around a summative assessment, which is the main task (group

creation of posters to be marked) as an end of Unit assessment. This task facilitated the

connection amongst multidiscipline and this topic, Conservation Biology, also made it easy to

add the Art criteria to the task since the students gained a greater appreciation and value to

their skills learnt within each subject or discipline. The selection of this topic or theme was as

a result of the characteristics it possessed. These characteristics are it’s a topic of interest to

the students, it reinforces content standard and skills (Art and Biology), allows for

investigation and research and it addresses a global issue.[ CITATION Don16 \l 11273 ] It will

also encourage them to move from lower order skills to higher order skills due to the

scaffolding nature of the task questions.

This curriculum integration came about having witnessed the impact correlations and

connections with other subjects have on student performance and understanding. In the

previous Unit, I identified that during a class activity, the students were given the option to

express their understanding of pollution in song, drawing, prose/written or a built model.

Their presentations were incredible and highly relatable to the content covered. It also

appealed to the various learning styles and the students were thoroughly engaged and their

take away, based on their performance in a summative (end of unit) assessment was really

impressive. As a result, I developed a “thirst” to experiment with this model of teaching and

actually work alongside a VAPA teacher and develop a lesson plan which connects both our

disciplines. The Head of Department for Art, Ms. Stacy Barrow, welcomed this initiative and

as a result offered herself to assist me in this multidisciplinary model. So we scheduled our

first meeting, where I identified that I would be creating this lesson for my Biology class

form 3 class and the theme will be “Conservation Biology”. Ms. Barrow suggested that we

could design a lesson which is task specific and the best time to do so; was after the students
would have already covered the content. Therefore, the suggestion of this multidisciplinary

approach started from the development of the lesson plan first. The focus of the lesson plan

was to highlight the pre- requisites the students will be coming with for both disciplines. The

biology objectives for the Unit conservation biology was already covered and the students

were entering this merged lesson with a strong understanding of definitions, concepts,

explanations of species examples and conservation methods etc. They are also entering this

lesson with a strong understanding of poster creation as identified by Ms. Barrow. She said

that these students would have done poster making and covered all the skills (lettering, design

and layout) since in form 2. As a form of preparation she will also review the skills required

for poster making in order to properly prepare the girls for the multidisciplinary lesson.

Therefore, the recording of the student pre-requisites and skills entering the lesson was easy

as it only required a simple reflection from both Ms. Barrow and myself. We later aligned the

objectives of this lesson with the appropriate classification and we developed the sequence

for the execution of this lesson plan. Considering the entire lesson is structured around the

summative assessment or task, a lot of time was later spent in the collaborative design of the

task. We spoke in depth about the expectations and even designed the rubric and the criteria

under the respective disciplines. To highlight the inputs stemming from the Art and Biology

disciplines, it was represented by a change in the font colour (orange is Art and black is

Biology). The lesson was well received by the students, they thoroughly enjoyed the lesson

and spoke highly of it in their individual journals which some of them shared with the class.

They truly gained a greater appreciation for the two disciplines and now sees the connection

between the two. Some of the students said they would have always tried review their work

for each of the topics they completed in Biology in the form of a diagram or chart, not

knowing that they were only able to do so because of the skills they developed in Art.
Therefore, they were able to understand the importance of connections between the two

disciplines as seen in the Task.

In reflecting I learnt that collaborating with another teacher allows you to various lesson

development strategies which can sometimes be challenging especially if there is no

compromise. However, I`m happy to report that we agreed with mostly everything. The

major challenge we had was finding free time to meet and plan this lesson and task. Once, we

were able to identify our free times we were able to meet and our interest to bring our vision

to life and engage in curriculum integration was our main goal. This facilitated the

development of a multidisciplinary lesson plan and a comprehensive task. I enjoyed the

creativity factor which really stood out during the conduction of the task and promoted a

student centred classroom, increased student engagement and understanding of the theme or

topic.