21st Century Integrated Learning Influences Motivation

“The backward design process facilitates a process where all collaborators can find a substantive place for their subject areas by providing a way to discover what is in common across them” (Drake, Kolohon, & Reid 121). The most exciting, intriguing, and motivating curriculums are the ones that integrate a variety of subject areas into a lesson plan. Currently in our education course we are designing, in groups, an integrated curriculum between our major subject areas. It is difficult because we have to find a way that each of our subjects ties together. For example, what commonalities do drama and science share? My group in particular is working very hard to incorporate big ideas and understandings between science, dramatic arts, and healthy living – a branch of physical education. It is extremely hard, as we are realizing now, to create a curriculum that not only fits the desires and requirements of the course content but also caters to student interests and has the ability to increase motivation.

Motivation is a huge factor that can often contribute to negative responses and productivity in the classroom. If students lack motivation, they can portray signs similar to a behavioral problem. Students with a lack of motivation seek attention and can jeopardize both their own learning, as well as the learning of the students around them. An interesting study was done a few years ago which highlighted, through numbers, percentages of drop-out students and the reasons behind their lack of success. There were several indicators that a lack of motivation played a large role in the drop-out decision. The study can be seen through this link:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/27531184

In attempt to teach more towards the expectations of the twenty-first century, I remember one teacher in my high school that did her best to educate us in an interesting and motivating way on a Shakespeare unit. She aimed to cater to our differentiated instructional needs. For example, when we were learning a lesson in class, she showed us the main expectation of the assignment, which would be to convey that we understand the main themes of the text we are examining. But instead of handing in a typical essay…

which was the original instructions of the assignment, we were allowed to demonstrate our ‘main argument or lesson we learned’ in a write up following a creative presentation of some sort. We had to demonstrate our knowledge of the text in our own creative way. Some students sang a song, some students rapped lyrics, some students wrote poetry, some students wrote a speech, etc. and each student had the chance to present their piece to the class in some way and explain, afterwards, why they chose to do what they did. My particular piece in that class involved a dramatic scene with 2-4 of my classmates in which we restated, through a mini skit, all of the major important dramatic lines from the Shakespearian play we were studying. This assignment was in no way limiting or restricting, in fact, it left the expectations quite open and interchangeable for students which we gladly enjoyed.

In my opinion, education should be fun, educational, and experimental. It should be something that everyone wants to participate in and receive along their future endeavors. Part of the twenty-first century view encompasses the idea of the teacher as an experimentalist. Drake, Kolohon, and Reid state, “The twenty-first-century educators open their classrooms to the world… they strive to develop strong relationships with their students…At the heart of their practice is caring about their students and being a catalyst for their growth as a whole person” (153). Teachers who follow a twenty-first century outlook are always learning. They are great innovators and strive towards making goals attainable through different areas of focus. Students like myself are also continuously learning, so if the learning process happens collaboratively, then we are not only able to work towards a more constructivist classroom approach, but we are also able to integrate subjects into the curriculum so that each student partakes in connecting with multiple subject areas in different ways.

Characteristics of a twenty-first century teacher can be seen in this short YouTube clip:

Drake, Susan M., Wendy Kolohon, and Joanne L. Reid. Interweaving curriculum and classroom assessment: engaging the 21st century learner. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2014. Print.