“I try to be the teacher that I needed in school,” says Bonnie Groeber, fourth grade educator at Muddy Brook Elementary School in Great Barrington, MA. Her science classes are inquiry-based and interdisciplinary in order to spark students’ natural curiosity and integrate lessons across subjects. Bonnie is quick to note how incredible her team of reading, writing, social studies, and science teachers are at collaborating to cover all the topics students need to learn in a year and that implementing an interdisciplinary approach to science learning involves many minds. “It takes a team to teach inquiry,” she says.
Bonnie and her colleagues at Muddy Brook Elementary School work together to design engaging activities that meet state standards, reach learning targets, and inspire students’ ownership of their own learning. They have found success in implementing collaborative, interdisciplinary, and inquiry-based units that scaffold students’ learning across disciplines.