On Friday, March 10, the theater was filled with excited Grade 6 students and parents. Our school leaders and several education experts from the Xiehe Education Center were also present to celebrate students’ project presentations. It was the day where ten groups of students shared what they had learned during an eight-week cross-subject unit, answering the question, “What is greenest way to power….?”
Last semester the students engaged in a sequence of lessons where they learned how power production can affect the environment and how to be greener in their daily lives. The unit linked the three subjects of Global Perspectives, Morality & Law, and Geography and involved student groups working together to research a given sub-topic, eventually presenting their findings to peers and others bilingually.
As the ten groups took to the stage one-by-one, one could see that they were both nervous and excited to present in front of their parents and school leaders. For many students, it was the first time presenting something bilingually with a perfect mix of both English and Chinese.
At the end of the presentation, Dr. Zhan Shengli, Ms. Jetty and Mr. Watt thanked all the students and the teachers involved for their great effort. Co-Principal Dr. Adam Neufield and Vice-Principal Ms. Flora Zhang along with Ms. Jennier Jin (Xiehe Education Center) presented the student groups with a small gift and a certificate of recognition for their outstanding work.
Initially, the term “cross-subject or interdisciplinary” referred to the breaking down of traditional boundaries between disciplines and engaging in teaching or research activities that involved two or more fields. The term encompassed the intersection of the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, as well as the permeation among these three fields. Interdisciplinary education refers to using the intersection of disciplines as a theoretical basis to address various complex problems as a practical goal and conducting multi-disciplinary education with a problem-solving and theoretical research orientation. This interdisciplinary approach, which takes a group of related disciplines as the unit of teaching and research activities, is of great significance for cultivating new talents with innovative and diverse thinking. We believe this is the ideal model for modern education, as real-life problems do not present themselves in a way that is neatly categorized by subject. Through their engagement with this interdisciplinary unit and the public display of their achievements, we hope that Grade 6 students gained valuable experiences from breaking down the barriers between subjects and by using their learning and thinking to solve real-life problems.