Upper School Spanish teacher Crystal Cleveland recently presented on how to create and implement an interdisciplinary experiential learning unit at the Annual Convention and World Languages Expo.
Sponsored by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), last month's conference in San Diego brought together more than 6,000 language teachers from a variety of backgrounds and institutions.
“An interdisciplinary approach makes learning information more memorable and meaningful, transferring it into long-term memory,” said Cleveland. “Once it's there, you can analyze and make connections, deductions and inferences—all leading to higher-level cognitive behaviors.”
In her session, "Exploring UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Interdisciplinary Unit Design," the Spanish teacher shared how she brought art and history into the classroom to give students a better comprehension of not only the language—but of the culture as a whole. Cleveland demonstrated the approach in practice by opening the presentation with a
documentary produced by Darlington's middle grades STEAM class. The film chronicled a special collaboration between Upper School Spanish 4 and pre-kindergarten students, who together studied and created prehistoric art, all in the Spanish language.
Cleveland's model unit finds its beginnings in an overseas trip that she took during the summer of 2014. The professional development experience was made possible by Darlington's
Carla and Leonard Wood Faculty Professional Development Endowment Award. Over the course of 18 days, she traveled throughout Spain researching the evolution of cultural expression in an effort to "bring the country" back to her students. The educator got to encounter firsthand different slices of the country's indigenous culture, dancing flamenco with natives and viewing some of the earliest known historical records and artwork in caves that date back to the Paleolithic era.
Using authentic artifacts and her rich experience abroad, Cleveland teamed up with ELA-2 art and Spanish teacher Susan Mann to create an experiential multimedia learning unit.
Upper School Spanish 4 students wrote and illustrated picture books about the prehistoric civilizations of modern-day Spain, using them as a tool to teach Spanish vocabulary words to their pre-kindergarten buddies. They also utilized hand gestures and digital games to reinforce not only what the younger students were learning in the multi-age lesson, but the older ones as well.
Their time together culminated in a final art project involving a simulated "cave," and then a canvas "pelt." Big kids assisted little kids in creating handprints and pictures of animals—just like
los hombres prehistóricos—the prehistoric people.
“If we can analyze an issue from all of the angles—through the lens of sociological aspects and
historical aspects, how the sciences feed into it, statistics, and so on—we can understand it better,” said Cleveland. “When information is not fragmented it is internalized, because it is much easier to connect with a holistic idea than with bits and pieces of information.”
During the session, attendees were given the opportunity to use Cleveland's framework as a basis to draw up their own multidisciplinary unit. The teacher shared tips and anecdotes from the project, and how she worked closely with her pupils to answer essential questions on art's role in recording history and its global value as a form of cultural inheritance.
“We want our kids to see that what they are learning in one classroom is related to everything else that they are studying,” added Cleveland. "Everything is interconnected.”
Click here to read Crystal Cleveland's blog about the different steps taken to create and implement the Spanish, history and art unit.
Click here to view the documentary film produced by middle grades students about the cross-divisional lesson.
