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Book: Interdisciplinary Teaching Through Physical Education
Authors: Cone, T., Werner, P., Cone, S. & Woods, A.
Reviewer: Eileen C. Sullivan, ED. D., Program Coordinator of Physical Education & Health Education, Boston University
Publishing Company: Human Kinetics (1997)
Pages: 280
Price: $29

It is a pleasure to review a book that is on "cutting edge" of updated information for our field. Interdisciplinary teaching, thematic units, and teaching across the disciplines is the future and the authors of Interdisciplinary Teaching Through Physical Education have complied a resource for us in a straight forward approach packed with sample activities and suggestions for teaching. The book is reader friendly, organized well, and the bold black and white drawings, graphs, and charts help readers want to read on.

I feel all Physical Educators, Adapted Physical Educators, Health teachers, Recreation Leaders, Dance teachers, as well as classroom teachers would benefit from learning how to engage learners by using movement as a medium to reinforce content. The first two chapters in the book present the theory behind the interdisciplinary approach. The three models of (1) Connected Model, (2) Shared Model, and the (3) Partnership Model are defined in a simple to read fashion. The remaining five chapters provide the reader with theory to practice examples of interdisciplinary teaching. The authors provide innovative games and activities to integrate the content of: language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, as well as active learning for music, theater arts, and visual arts. An overview of the concepts for these disciplines, by grade level, is displayed in a scope and sequence chart form at the beginning of each chapter.

Readers will be able to use the book as a resource for sample games to play with their classes. I challenge all Physical Educators to read "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak to their classes, then play "The Rumpus Dance" from the book with all their Kindergarten through Grade Three classes. This is the first game explained in Chapter 3, "Active Learning Involving Language Arts." Using his game as an example, objectives are listed, equipment needed, organization, a description in easy to read format, teaching cues, assessment suggestions, ideas for modifications or changes, and a "Teachable Moments" box with key concepts to stress. This format for the games is carried throughout the book for the activities with the other disciplines. Some of my favorite activities from the other chapters: "How Long Will It Take to Get There" (page 97, a math activity for math awareness), "The Rainbow Run" (page 136, a science activity), "Heave, Hurl, Fling" (a social studies activity which could involve the entire school, page 186-192 and in line with the Olympics theme this month of September), and "The Circus Performers" (music and the arts activity, pages 218-226). The names of all of the activities are inviting. I hope to play "Pete and Repeat", "Weather or Not", "Oh Deer", and "Lines of Expression" with some classes.

While all of the games can be taught anytime during the Physical Education day, the most appropriate means of using the content form this book would be to make connections with the school district's content goals and state objectives for discipline content. Here in the state of Massachusetts I would match the games to our Frameworks in Math, Science, or Language Arts and also make connections with the NASPE National Standards in Physical Education. Physical Educators need not integrate every day for every class as the psycho-motor domain is our primary objective. Target one class or one grade level each month and try one of the games from the book. Find out what classroom teachers are doing and reinforce the content with movement in the gymnasium.

The Physical Educator or user of the book will need to develop a lesson or unit plan and try to teach a proper progression of activities. Sample lesson plans are not provided and the games are separate entities but they can be easily united. Be creative and design additional games and activities to meet your needs in the gymnasium. To help you develop the confidence, the background and the knowledge to create your own interdisciplinary activities, use the book, Interdisciplinary Teaching Through Physical Education as your first reference guide.

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