The Building Bridges Program: Connecting Secondary Teacher Preparation Programs To Foster Integrated Learning.

Overview & Synopsis

This packet describes the Building Bridges Program at Illinois State University, which integrates the secondary preservice teacher education curriculum across English, history/social science, technology and business education. The goal of the program is to prepare preservice secondary teachers with experiences that promote their understanding of how to initiate, develop and deliver integrated instruction to teachers from divergent disciplines.The program allows secondary education students the opportunity to examine closely the tenets of curriculum integration and then learn through practice. Since 1992, 450 future teachers have been exposed to integrated curriculum development through this program. The packet contains a description of the program and a schedule of student presentations of integrated units from October 9, 1996 and October 12, 1995. Each session presentation includes a unit description with curricular links, rationale, and objectives for the unit. (EH)