Have you ever felt like there just isn’t enough time to teach everything that
needs to be covered? When I first began teaching 4th grade Social Studies and
Language Arts, I was definitely overwhelmed with this feeling! I felt like I was
constantly leaving something out and just struggled with how to do a better job
at balancing all of the content.
It was about that time that my teaching partner
and I stumbled upon the concept of integration. We were “in between” series in
Language Arts and decided to try teaching all of our standards through the use
of novels. As we carefully selected our first one to try, we were both shocked
at how effortlessly so many language arts standards could be introduced,
reviewed, or practiced in just one chapter of a good, old fashioned novel
written on an upper elementary reading level!
We decided to take it one step further and choose a book that would also cover
our social studies standards. After analyzing several recommended books, we
decided to go with Frindle by Andrew Clements. This novel clearly had a
great economics connection and we felt confident that we could engage our
students through this story in order to help them understand the economic
standards. Wow! We had no idea how effective this method of teaching
would be! The kids LOVED reading the story about Nick and his friends
inventing a new word. They understood concepts like supply and demand,
entrepreneurship, patents, opportunity costs, needs vs wants, and so many
others as real life examples literally were right in front of them on the
pages of this wonderful story!
In addition, we were also able to introduce our language arts
standards of character traits and actions, perspective and point of view, and
making inferences. To top that off, our grammar and vocabulary lessons were all
based on words pulled from the book to make it more meaningful and connected
for the students. We spent about 5 weeks on that initial integrated unit of study,
and we’ve never looked back!
Every unit we teach now surrounds a chunk of our
social studies standards and is supported by the language arts skills that we
need to cover. Today, the amount of skills we can cover in 90 minutes
incredible. And, it’s all so connected for the kids! Here is a list of 4th grade
novels and topics we cover and connect through this integrated model of
teaching:
Frindle by Andrew Clements: Economics
Who was Magellan by Sydelle Kramer: New World Exploration
Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth G Speare: Native Americans
George Washington’s Socks by Elvira Woodruff: American Revolution
Who was Thomas Edison by Margaret Frith: Inventors
The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz: Pioneer: Westward Movement
I can’t recommend this way of teaching enough! It will truly bring the magic and
love of literatures back into your teaching!
