Let’s face it. There is not enough time in the day to teach the required amount of time in each standard. Many districts have a required number of minutes to spend on each standard, someone’s idea of what it takes to have enough practice to reach proficiency. Multiply the number of minutes required by the number of standards required, and you’ll find that in most cases, there are not enough minutes in the school day.

How Do You Find Time to Teach the Standards?

The key is in cross-curricular planning, or overlap. It’s not a difficult concept, but it’s definitely one that teachers find hard to embrace. Cross-curricular planning means that you, as a teacher, may need to do more detailed long range planning, but it will pay off in student understanding and achievement. If you teach only one or two subjects, it might mean that you’ll need to team plan with another department to coordinate projects and assignments.

Plan to Integrate Standards Across Subjects

Look at the year-long curricular map and determine when each standard in the strand will be taught. Then coordinate assignments to cover that standard in all areas. This coordination in planning will result in deeper student involvement, deeper understanding, and more time to devote to the concepts taught.

Integrate Writing Assignments With Math, Science, and Social Studies

Plan all of your assignments with several standards in mind. Writing integrates well into most areas. For example:

• Have students write a summary of a chapter they just read. When we read in our science book, I routinely have students write a summary of the material. It solidifies the information, as well as meeting a writing standard. 
• Have students write a response to information taught. This encourages critical thinking, and meets another writing standard. 
• Have students write a persuasive essay on a social studies topic, defending one side or the other. When we study the American Revolution, students must write an essay in defense of the British or the Americans. 
• Have students do book reports about the subject being studied. For example, when we study Native American Tribes at the beginning of the year, guess what topic the students must choose for a research report? You got it. One Native American Tribe’s customs, lifestyle, and history. 
• When we study figurative language, I integrate it into a unit on poetry. The culminating activity is the recitation of a poem, which meets two standards in one assignment. 
• I integrate Art with Writing, by teaching a beginning lesson on dialogue through graphic literature, or comic strips. 
• I integrate Math with Art, through the teaching of perspective and distance, drawing in 3-D, and in tessellations and repeating designs. 
• I integrate Math with Writing, by requiring students to write story problems for math equations. I sometimes have them write about the steps they use to solve a problem, teaching them sequencing in writing. 
• Math and Science integrate quite well, by creating a math problem based on a science concept.
• Do you have a Listening and Speaking Standard to meet? Have the students present any of these assignments to the class as part of a Listening and Speaking lesson.

Use Your Expertise to Find More Cross-Curricular Connections

Each teacher has a different program, so of course, these ideas I presented are simply a jumping off point for you to begin your own planning.

Yes, it is possible to meet all the standards, but only if you overlap your subjects and assignments. That’s the way to really get the students learning.