Cross-Curricular Planning

What is Cross-Curricular Planning and How is it Beneficial?

According to The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1-8: Mathematics, Cross-curricular learning provides students with "opportunities to learn and use related content and/or skills in two or more subjects."

Rather than learning subject-specific content in isolation, cross-curricular planning allows students to learn knowledge in context with other knowledge, thereby giving it a deeper sense of meaning and relevance. Planning for math in this manner enables students to see a real-life context for math concepts in other subjects, which in turn fosters greater meaning. Integrating mathematics into other subject areas can also help create avenues for further discoveries, as the connections made between subjects can lead to new perspectives. 

Planning with a cross-curricular focus also makes teaching easier, as we are able to tie the concepts from multiple subjects together at the same time. Children are typically more engaged when connections are being made in their learning. By integrating math into other subject areas, we can clearly illustrate that math is, indeed, everywhere!

Cross-Curricular Experiences in Action

In an effort to provide an example of a cross-curricular approach to teaching several math concepts in a Full-Day Kindergarten class, following is a description of a project we undertook:

We created a Zoo in our classroom as part of a larger inquiry project which was inspired by the children's interests. This project allowed us to integrate math and a variety of subjects across the curriculum. Groups of children each researched a zoo animal of their choosing (Science & Language), recorded the information (Language), and then created a 3-D sculpture of that animal using boxes, tubes, a variety of found materials, paints, tape, glue, etc. (Art & Math). We learned, how tall, on average, each animal was and then measured out pieces of string to represent each animal's height - our sculptures could not always be as tall as the real deal! The children found it very interesting and exciting that the string representing the giraffe began at the baseboard, went up along the wall, and then continued along the ceiling, showing us that a giraffe would have to bend his neck over to fit in our classroom. Children compared themselves to each animal, communicating whether they were shorter/taller than each animal, or discovering how many of themselves it would take to be as tall as a specific animal.

We also examined how much food some of the animals typically eat, and used a scale to figure out how many of us it took to equal those weights. After creating details habitats, signs for our zoo, a ticket booth with pricing, etc., we invited the students' parents and other classes in the school to come visit, where they could purchase tickets and see our Zoo. Measurement was brought to life in a meaningful way through this project, as was the handling of money. 


Resources

The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8: Mathematics. The Ministry of Education: Queen's Printer for Ontario, 2005 (revised).