I always thought that Dr. D coined the “So what?” question, so when I read it in the reading, I was shocked! Asking this question makes a lot of sense, because it cuts out the trivial things that teachers get caught up in and allows true learning and exploration to take place.

Something else that seems extremely obvious to me is that students learn best when the material is relevant to them, but so many times, students do not have the opportunities to learn in this manner. Teachers need to teach relevant material, because when students are interested, they perform better and are more engaged. Obviously, this would help cut down on behavior problems which would free up even more time for teachers.

I also found the physical act of scanning and clustering standards for integration to be interesting, because it makes it so much easier to plan an integrated curriculum if teachers physically mark the standards that go together and then connect them into the whole. This is especially helpful to the students, so their learning is not disconnected and meaningless. Students need to have the opportunity to make connections across the entire curriculum.

Kayleigh Harkins