Teaching Tuesday: Positive Outcomes of Integrating Multiple Subjects into Single Lessons

As teachers, we can design multi-discipline lessons in an intentional way to have a great impact on student learning. Lessons that involve more than one subject area save time and can help students understand the real-world usefulness of some math subject areas when combined with day-to-day activities.

Multi-subject lessons also allow for enhanced collaboration opportunities between teachers, as we can share our expertise and resources with one another. This can lead to more opportunities to relate content-based learning in our areas to students’ life-experiences with broader application. Keep reading to learn more about the positive outcomes of multi-subject lessons.

Nearly all subjects can be integrated together in lessons. Math and science are a natural combination, as they both include computations that can be combined and analyzed. History and math are also easy to combine because we can support students in calculating time frames based on dates of historic events.

Math can also be combined with health to provide us with a great opportunity to calculate calories consumed and burned through diet and exercise. Another smooth integration is between social studies and math, as we can facilitate the computations of distances between any two points on a map or globe. Students can additionally figure out travel cost and determine the most time efficient modes of travel one place to another.

When subjects are taught in an integrated or combined approach, we double the chances for students to be engaged in a lesson. Some students would not be interested in adding random numbers together or doing rote calculations, but they can be motivated and excited to add numbers together to figure out how much money they earned or saved to buy the new video game they want! By incorporating real-world situations into lessons through integration, we have created an effective motivational tool.

Combining subjects into single lessons allows us to work together with our fellow educators and motivate our students. This integrated planning approach can save us preparation time, as by combining subjects, we are now combing time spent on two lessons into one. Most importantly, integrating subjects allows us as teachers to skillfully heightened student engagement and learning by incorporating real world experiences and areas of student interest into interdisciplinary lessons!

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