Independent Together: Supporting the Multilevel Community

Learning Community for Teachers

Curriculum integration in the multilevel classroom involves connecting the big ideas across curricula or subject areas and grades to instruction.

Curriculum integration

  • makes student learning relevant and authentic
  • makes effective and efficient use of instructional time
  • supports a wide range of learners through best practices
  • shows learning and understanding with authentic performance tasks, processes, and/or products

All curricula are integrated, but not all the time.

  • Mathematics requires time for investigating and applying concepts during mathematics workshops. Listen to Audio Clip (752 KB)
  • Physical education requires time to learn and practise new knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
  • Integration of English language arts, science, social studies, View Print Material health education, and information and communication technologies creates rich opportunities for student inquiry. View Picture

When planning for curriculum integration in the multilevel classroom, you can

  • reflect on the classroom continuum of learning and the learners' interests
  • start with a mid-range grade set of Foundation for Implementation documents, and grow from this starting point as experience and confidence develops
  • think about the big ideas across curricula to develop interdisciplinary themes/units
  • target a balance of learning outcomes across curricula to assess student knowledge, skills and strategies, and attitudes View Word Document Note: When targeting four or five learning outcomes, several enabling outcomes will also be achieved and applied throughout the duration of the theme/unit.
  • timetable workshops for quality learning and ongoing assessment View Picture
  • experience learning through primary sources such as engaging in out-of-classroom experiences View Picture, inviting Elders or experts into the classroom, and using authentic open-ended resources (text sets View Picture and manipulatives)
  • offer a variety of approaches for practising and applying learning, such as the multiple intelligences model Watch Video Clip (748 KB)
  • engage learners in planning for inquiry Watch Video Clip (1.20 MB) - Watch Video Clip (681 KB)
  • invite parents into the classroom to help them understand what curriculum integration looks and sounds like View Picture