Interdisciplinary Projects

Interdisciplinary Projects & Plans

The following listings offer projects that cut across traditional subject divisions and introduce concepts in an integrated fashion. These are grouped by approximate grade level, but you may want to consider using more advanced content with high-ability learners, or less advanced content for learners who need additional reinforcement.

Elementary Resources

Chesapeake Bay Lesson Unit - Grade 4 - This is a complete Chesapeake Bay study unit created by the Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Va. It includes sections on the history of the bay, native peoples, and early settlement. Much of the site is devoted to lessons and information dealing with the marine environment in the bay. There's also a section on shipbuilding and commerce. This site could easily form the basis for an interdisciplinary study of an American coastal community or ecosystem.
: The Dinosaur Unit - Grade 2 - This is a second grade level look at dinosaurs which includes projects in math, art, reading, and other disciplines. The web pages include examples of completed projects as well as descriptions of how the various unit elements link together. Projects and site created by Germantown Academy in metropolitan Philadelphia.

Oceanography Lesson Unit - Grades 3-6 - The US Navy Occeanography command has compiled an interesting collection of lessons for science, social studies, PE, math, and writing - all dealing with oceans and oceanography. Teachers can use the series "as is" or create their own sequence depending on their class. There are also links to other related resources, as well as pages for elementary students. Interesting resource and approach.

Puzzles Pages - Grade level: K - 6 - Lots and lots of paper cross word puzzles, word searches and math puzzles in 10 categories. Look great!

Project Primary - A collection of lesson plans on science and related topics, produced as a collaborative project between university faculty and elementary educators.

Super Site for Kids - Grade level: 2-5 - Includes 1300 activities on "practically everything" you can play, color, explore, inspect, imagine. Limited assortment of information. Information is very well covered but limited in subject areas. Subjects appear to change periodically.

Middle School Resources

AskAsia, The Asia Society’s Asian Educational Resource Center - Grades K-12 - World Cultures/Art/ Interdisciplinary - This site has comprehensive information, resources, and teaching materials about Asia and Asian-Americans. There is a virtual art gallery, a large selection of lesson plans, a locator for teaching materials in your region of the U.S., a page to send questions from teachers or students to experts on Asia, a page of interviews with authors about Asia, and a large collection of supplementary teaching materials, such as maps and images. This could be a great resource for familiarizing both teachers and students with Asian topics.

Become an Inventor - Grades 5-8 - Teachers interested in creating an inventions/inventors unit will find this site useful. It shows students the inquisitive process by which inventions come to be, and gives students a chance to search out problems that need inventive solutions. Lots of links to other inventors give you a way to show how others developed their own inventions.

Life in a Medieval Village - An extensive simulation exercise which allows students to travel through and read about a medieval village, hear musical instruments and learn about them, and explore other aspects of medieval life.

What's in a Logo? - Computer Education - Grades 6-8 - Here's a one-week unit that lets middle schoolers decide what makes a good logo, then create their own logo and advertising campaign for a product of their choice.

E-mail Classroom Exchange: A Global classroom email exchange site. - Appropriate for all grade levels. This site includes a listing of classrooms world wide to "hook up with" as pen pals. Through electronic mail, Internet voice communication, and the WWW, sound and video clips can be shared all over the world. This is an excellent opportunity for all classrooms with Internet access. You can register for automatic updates to listings as well.

High School Resources

How Microchips are made - from Intel - This site offers an explanation of how microprocessors are manufactured. There are both HTML and Shockwave versions available, and the Shockwave version is far superior. Teachers can learn from this one also.

Meeting the Blues - A collection of interdisciplinary lessons on the music, art, and literature of the American "blues" musical art form. There are individual lessons suitable for elementary, middle school, and high school students.

Advanced Placement Projects

The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Hypermedia Research Archive - AP High School - This site, developed by the University of Michigan Press, is a demonstration model of the Rossetti Archive, a hypermedia presentation of the Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The complete archive will be published on the Internet by 1998. The site will contain a digital image of every textual and pictorial document relevant to Rossetti including related scholarly and critical materials. The site is marked for full electronic search and analysis. Even in its "under construction" phase, this site is a valuable resource of images and texts of both Rossetti's poetry and paintings. The site would be of great use to interdisciplinary projects of literature/art history/humanities.

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