Thematic Units

Inquiry-based Integrated Units

Topics are often selected at random and are based on language themes (colour, pirates, fantasy, etc).  Topic selection is often process rather than content driven.

Topics are selected to develop significant understanding.  This content ‘drives’ the unit.  Processes are used in a meaningful context.  Topics are seen as vehicles for the gradual development of big ideas.

Activities are often only loosely linked to the topic: a transport theme may involve students in making a graph of the different coloured cars in the carpark.  The learning about transport itself is minimal.

Activities are designed to develop planned understandings about the topic.  The teacher asks: How will this activity help to develop and challenge students’ understandings about this topic?

Attempts are made to include every area of the curriculum in each theme, often resulting in forced rather than genuine links.  The teacher may ask, for example: How can I make maths fit into this theme?

The study of KLAs drives the teacher’s planning and forms the content of the unit. Maths, language, art and other process areas are selected according to the extent to which they can be purposefully used by the learner.  The students and teacher ask, for example: What is the most effective way we could present this data?

There is no necessary sequence of activities.  They tend to be discrete and unconnected and are able to be carried out in random order.

Activities are developed along an inquiry model of teaching and learning.  Units move through a broad sequence of stages.

Themes are largely driven by the various separate curriculum areas.

The unit merges areas of the curriculum together in purposeful ways.

Themes are often planned as the whole classroom program: all or most activities done during the course of the week are under the umbrella of one topic.

Integrated units are a significant part of the classroom program.  Other regular routines will continue to operate alongside them and there will be times when the teacher will ‘step out’ of the unit to focus on a particular skill or concept or other curriculum area.

Student choice and input may be very limited within a theme; activities are planned and directed by the teacher.  On the other hand, some thematic approaches take the opposite view and build the activities almost entirely around student interest, often including the choice of topic itself.

Teachers consider both the interests and needs of students in their planning.  A degree of choice exists for the learner but this is negotiated with other students and with the teacher.