Reflect on Your Practice
- Have you ever taught an interdisciplinary unit, using a theme to provide connections for your students? What is an example? What were some strengths, and weaknesses, of the unit?
- Have you observed differences in how your students respond to theme-based instruction vs. more topic-driven instruction? What are the pros and cons of each?
- How do you use photographs, artifacts, primary documents, musical recordings, or films to help your students get a more vivid sense of a distant time or place?
Adaptations / Extensions to Consider
Focus your study: Once you have chosen a theme, identify important concepts within it that students can encounter through different disciplines. For example, WWII might include the concepts of patriotism, racism and resistance – which offer opportunities for looking at visual art, music, literature, theatre, dance, and artifacts.
Leverage technology: Go online to find archives of primary source materials that help you bring an earlier era to life, such as audio recordings, films, photographs, speeches, and documents. A good place to start is the Library of Congress’ American Memory collections, available at memory.loc.gov.
NEXT: Additional Resources, including unit materials that teachers used.