Merging subjects, merging students
The newest thing in education (speaking of educrat jargon) is "Guided Language Acquisition Design", or GLAD. I was all prepared to make fun of it, given its pretentious name and Californian origin, but it seems to be based on firm scientific and educational research, and, equally important, it seems to work:
The language acquisition program, founded in 1981 by two teachers in Fountain Valley, Calif., emphasizes connections among ideas. Everything taught, from geography to vocabulary, is relevant to the lesson's theme. Teachers -- whether they're teaching social studies or science -- write songs, draw maps, build timelines and show pictures from magazines. They hang butcher paper charts and illustrations around the classroom to create "living walls" -- reference points that help students tie together previous lessons.
Students brainstorm collectively, generate questions, form hypotheses and discuss their findings. Those learning English are encouraged to communicate in their native languages, their thoughts later translated for classmates...
Originally founded to make lessons more comprehensible to English learners, GLAD teaching strategies reflect state education standards. They build themed lessons that encompass required reading, writing and analytical skills. National test data in the past decade show the strategies significantly boost students' standardized test scores in reading, language and spelling, with growth by English learners far exceeding the norm, said Marcia Brechtel, one of Project GLAD's founders and its director of training.
As I said, I was initially suspicious - there's that Californian obsession with "collective" work - but the test scores back them up.