Teaching Across the Curriculum

I will regularly provide various opportunities to explore how subjects over-lap.

Biology is not just a science. Biology incorporates math, reading, writing, history, politics and many

other subjects. To deny that these subjects are not a part of Biology would be merely a simplification.

In the photo above, I am demonstrating how different kinds of household cleaners can make an impact

on the environment. Something as simple as household cleaners is applicable to what they are learning

in biology, but students need you to make it clear to them. In making more real world examples,

students are able to bridge the gap between the things that they learn at school and what is applicable

when they are at home or establishing for future use.

Teaching Across the Curriculum Artifacts

Christopher Lesson PlanMy initial experience with making material across the curriculum came up in my literacy pedagogy class.

I had to teach a lesson on three chapters from a book. These chapters had nothing in common with

themes ranging from prime numbers to metaphors to identification. So in my lesson, I taught them

about those three aspects that made up the main character. In doing this, I realized that no matter what

subject I may be presently teaching, I will have to use my skills from other subjects to better understand

things like a main character in a novel or the relationships that appear with wording. Students will not

always recognize the over-lapping of material, but it is my responsibility a teacher to guide them in

seeing how the world is interwoven.

Christopher Lesson PlanThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Mark Haddon (2003): Pgs. 11-16 (Chapters 19-29).

Chapter 19: prime numbers- Christopher takes a whole chapter to explain prime numbers, how they are found and the uses they offer in the real world. Just as scientists find ways to order the world so does Christopher.

Chapter 23: police station experience- highlights Christopher’s attention to numbers as a way of providing order to his world. The objects in his pockets emphasize what he considers the most important to him.

Chapter 29: trouble with metaphors and reading people’s faces- Christopher explains his difficulties with understanding non direct material such as metaphors and facial expressions. If a person were to know this about Christopher, they would understand better how to communicate with him. Christopher attempts to explain how his name is a metaphor and how it is not an accurate representation of himself. How would students relate to him in this manner?

Key Concepts:-metaphors-prime numbers-how we identify ourselves-the list of things in Christopher’s pocket at the police station-attention to numbers

(5-10 minutes) Pre-Reading activity: Find the prime numbers between 1 and 50. The students will fill out the upper part of the worksheet for this activity. After they have found all the prime numbers explain this is how the chapters are ordered because this is how Christopher finds order in his life. He likes to obtain a goal or solve a problem. Just as the students had to obtain a goal or solve a problem in

finding all the prime numbers between one and fifty. That is what makes him motivated. (quote: text about CIA offering money for the largest possible prime numbers a person can find.)

(8-12 minutes) During Reading Activity: The students will be paired based on the meaning of their names (which must be looked up a head of time). In their pairs ask them these questions:-What is a metaphor?-How are names like metaphors?-Is the name on their slip an accurate metaphor them? Explain why or why not.Bring them all back together as a group and inform them that the names on their slips are meanings of their names. Discuss the difficulties of metaphors. Read Christopher’s examples from the chapter to the class as guides for metaphors. I really would want the students to realize that people have multiple perspectives of one word.

(5-10 minutes) After Reading Activity: have them fill out the fill in the blank part of the worksheet by reading from Chapter 23. When done have them circle the important words and phrases. With those circled words, have them write a poem that “summarizes” the section and attempts to stay as true as possible to the original content.

Christopher WorksheetChapter 19 - Using the table below, follow these instructions.

Put a line through all the numbers that are multiples of 2. Put a line through all the numbers that are multiples of 3. Put a line through all the numbers that are multiples of 4. Put a line through all the numbers that are multiples of 5. Put a line through all the numbers that

are multiples of 6. Put a line through all the numbers that

are multiples of 7.

Write what numbers are left:

__________________________________________

Chapter 23- Fill in the Blank from Book

When I got to the ____________________they made me take the ____________________ out of my

shoes and empty my ____________________ at the front desk in case I had anything in them that I

could use to kill myself or escape or attack a ____________________with.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

The sergeant behind the desk had very hairy hand and he had bitten his nails so much that they had

bled.

This is what I had in my pockets:

1. A ____________________with 13 attachments including a wire stripper and a saw and a toothpick and tweezers2. A piece of ____________________3. A piece of a ____________________which looked like this (as seen on pg. 13)4. 3 pellets of ____________________for Toby, my rat5. £1.47 (this was made up of a £1 coin, a 20p coin, two 10p coins, a 5p coin and a 2p coin)6. A red ____________________7. A ____________________ for the front door

I was also wearing my ____________________ and they wanted me to leave this at the desk as well but

I said that I needed to keep my watch on because I ____________________ to know

____________________ what time it was. And when they tried to take it off me I screamed, so they let

me keep it on.

Population Research and GraphSome of the most basic skills in researching an animal’s population, there is the need to apply

mathematic graphing skills. In the population research activity, students had to apply their knowledge

about graphing and other visual representations of the numerical data to the moose and wolf

populations of Isle Royale. Throughout they were asking how and why they were to use their math

skills. I pointed out that in the scientific community researcher have to represent their data as part of

their formal research write ups and one way of representing the data is through graphing. Graphing is a

way to summarize collected data and information. Just as you summarize for English in a sentence or

paragraph, you can summarize in science and math with graphs.

History of Food ChainsAs a history major, I am always looking for interesting discoveries or practices that occurred in science or

any other subject and I like to bring them into class when applicable to the material being covered. The

history of food chains article was a part of the initial class discussion on food chains and how they are

established or defined. The students found it amazing that science has been documented for so long

outside of Rome or Greece. They initially thought that science is a new subject and has on become

applicable in the last five hundred years. The article and others like it have helped the students

understand how to define their observations and begin forming hypotheses based on them.

History of Food ChainsAl- Jahiz (781-868/869), whose real name was Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr al-Kinani al-Fuqaimi al-Basr, was a famous Afro-Arab scholar of East African descent. Al-Jahiz’s stories of about 350 kinds of animals contain some original observations (Kopf 1952, Lewin 1952, Bodenheimer 1958:194–195, Pellat 1969, Plessner 1973). Bayrakdar’s case for al-Jahiz being an evolutionist is unconvincing, but his narrower claim that he “recognized the effect of environmental factors on animal life” (1983:151) seems valid. Apparently, al-Jahiz was the first to discuss food chains, although his details are not always accurate. He claimed that “the lizard is clever in hunting the snake and fox.” Perhaps his source was translated into Arabic from a book claiming that the snake and fox are clever in hunting the lizard. He continued (VI, 133: see Asin Palacios 1930:38–39 [in Spanish], and Zirkle 1941:84–85):

“The mosquitoes go out to look for their food as they know instinctively that blood is the thing which makes them live. As soon as they see the elephant, hippopotamus or any other animal, they know that the skin has been fashioned to serve them as food; and falling on it, they pierce it with their proboscises, certain that their thrusts are piercing deep enough and are capable of reaching down to draw the blood. Flies in their turn, although they feed on many and various things, principally hunt the mosquito . . . . All animals, in short, can not exist without food, neither can the hunting animal escape being hunted in his turn.”

This is the earliest known description of a food chain. Al-Jahiz’s animal stories remained immensely popular and influenced later writers.

Citation:Frank N. Egerton, "A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 6: Arabic Language Science - Origins and Zoological", Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, April 2002: 142-146 [143]