The laws of nature are best understood through the lens of integrated sciences. Historically, in-depth scientific study has been conducted in compartmentalized disciplines. However, these divisions diminish our understanding of natural phenomena as products of the interactions between fundamental principles of nature.

An integrated approach provides a unified and powerful way to think about science, while also exposing students to the distinct historical disciplines.

It is important for teachers to learn, revisit, and incorporate these concepts into their classes for several reasons:

• More colleges and institutions of higher education are adopting this approach to teaching science. Students should be familiar with this way of thinking.
• Natural phenomena can only be fully explained through integrative sciences. Each discipline may explain an aspect of a phenomenon, but only a global and comprehensive approach will promote complete understanding of the process under study.
• Interactions between organisms and the physical world are dynamic and complex. Understanding these interactions requires a holistic study — including physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, history, and earth sciences.

Each exploration in this section has several objectives: 1) Revise the fundamentals of science, 2) Integrate and understand these principles, 3) Construct an activity aimed to show understanding of the theory, 4) Create and review lesson plans to be used in middle or high school classrooms.

Adoption of the integrated science approach will likely be slow because it differs from traditional disciplinary models and methods. The Owlet is launching this section beginning with individual topics and lesson plans, but in the future we will present larger thematic units, and hope teachers may consider incorporating these into their curricula.

We’ve highlighted lesson plans that use the integratives sciences approach in the list below.