Comprehensive Curriculum Design

Posted by Douglas Parker Sep 16, 2007

Can anyone think of a real-life situation when only one set of procedures meets all of the needs of the project? I can’t. Even something as routine as getting dinner ready takes a number of skills from different domains. For example, the cook needs to purchase the correct food at the best price available, which requires skills both culinary and mathematic skills. Then the cook needs to prepare the dinner by separating the recently purchased foods, which takes the ability to discriminate. Choosing the correct amounts of food takes the capability to project and match the estimated requirements of the diners. And the process goes on and on.

The same can be said about teaching gifted children.

Gifted children like to work out answers. They like to be challenged to discover things on their own and then take those discoveries and make something useful out of it. In schools that understand the needs of gifted children, their education differs from the traditional curriculum in several possible ways. This process can be called a number of things such as differentiated instruction or enriched learning.

At the heart of these programs is an understanding that gifted children’s needs are unique from other students. Some people try to diminish these needs by assuming that since those kids are so smart anyway, they’ll just take care of themselves.

It just doesn’t work that way.

One of the ways to meet some of the needs of gifted children, along with improving the instructional effectiveness for the entire classroom, is by using an integrated curriculum, or interdisciplinary teaching. I would encourage parents, homeschool associations, and teachers who are looking for ways to motivate and empower their students to begin discussions about cooking up an integrated curriculum in their classrooms.