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INTEGRATION – HOW DOES IT HAPPEN – WHAT WE DID ** We are already integrating some lessons at Bergman High School. However, through this grant, we wanted to get integration started in a big way. Therefore, through this process, we planned an integration activity that would involve all of the high school students and faculty and hopefully show students and teachers how all subjects interconnect. From this experience, we hope to further our integration involvement through teachers coming up with individualized integration activities through their classes and subject areas as least once each quarter during the 2007-08 school year. Our first step in the integration process was having Dr. Mahler come in and present to us the key points of integration and its importance in the future of education. He showed us a variety of slide shows that show some possible pitfalls that our current educational process has fallen into. Integration is key to our student’s future educational successes.
 * [[file:Bergman Integration Narrative.doc]]

Our second step was to meet and brainstorm ideas of specifically how we wanted to get integration started on our campus. We wrote down everything on charts and taped them on the wall. One person in the group also recorded our discussions in a PowerPoint so that at the end of the day, we wouldn’t have to convert our Once we had selected our integration idea, we went to work picking a date to schedule the activity. We then discussed whether we wanted students to rotate to each teacher’s classroom or if we wanted teachers to rotate to the students. We finally decided to group our teachers in groups of math/science/vocational teachers and language arts/history/vocational. We’re sure that each school would be different in this respect just depending on what the backgrounds are of your teachers. We also decided that we would combine the student groups together into eight groups with four groups listening to the math/science/vocational presentation on information they needed to build their marshmallow catapult and the other four groups would be listening to the language arts/history/vocational teachers and then they would switch. We then mapped out our timeline for the day.

From that point our integration group of teachers decided we could work separately to come up with the rest of the information needed for the day. One group worked on the math/science lesson plans needed for that 30 minute presentation, another group worked on the language arts/history/presentation lesson plans needed for that 30 minute presentation, another group worked on the instruction sheets necessary for students to understand what their goal was for the day as well as a supplies list, and the last group worked on dividing up the students into groups. Dividing the students into groups was another topic of discussion. At one point, we were hoping to do a learning styles inventory of the students and try to group them according to their learning styles and strengths and weaknesses. However, in the time frame, we felt it was just too much to try to accomplish. Therefore, we printed student lists from APSCN and started numbering them from 1 to 12 and grouped them in that manner, with the caveat that if we saw groups that would have problems, we would switch them and make sure that each team would have the best chance for success.

Our next step was to meet with teachers and explain the process. Also, two members volunteered to create and put up flyers that would advertise the activity day with generalities to generate student interest.