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Tips for Planning Interdisciplinary Units in Middle School

By Sarah Henchey

During my fifth year of teaching, my principal asked me to move from the 8th grade to the 6th grade. I suddenly became more aware of the range of students within a middle school: Some students still had baby teeth and believed in Santa while, one floor away, others were dangerously close to driving and shaving.

I soon realized that 6th graders needed more repetition and connectedness in their learning. Fresh from elementary school, where they'd spent most of the day with one teacher, they were not used to a patchwork curriculum in which class changes signified the boundaries between subjects.

I'd learned in my undergraduate coursework about how team-teaching could ease this transition, supporting students' social and emotional needs via interdisciplinary instruction. I just hadn't seen it in practice—until my principal arranged for a group of us to visit...