The American Association of School Administrators published a report in which they offered a new definition for schools in the 21st century.  They state that . . .

"schools will be laced with a "project-based curriculum for life, aimed at engaging students in addressing real-world problems, issues important to humanity, and questions that matter. The education they receive must enhance both their knowledge and creativity. At the same time, it should enable students to think, reason, make sound decisions, work as members of a team, and see the relationships among things they're learning in various subjects--across disciplines. AASA

Selecting a quality theme will provide a natural vehicle for this curriculum.  Below you will find a Themes Bank, which is a list of possible themes you can develop for your students.  Some of them have links to resources for developing that theme.  These are offered as possible themes, meant to "jump-start" your brainstorming process for themes.

In this web site you can find sample units as well as guidelines for developing your theme.  See our page on Curriculum Design.

Theme studies are meaningful and worth doing if they support the study of big ideas that are true over space and time, broaden students' understanding of their world and human experience, are interdisciplinary, relate to students' genuine interests and lead to student inquiry.  Themes can be developed from students' common interests, adolescent literature and trade books, textbook topics, current events, local sites and community resources, cultural heritage, teachers' interests or expertise, objects and artifacts and abstract concepts.  Students should be afforded opportunities for real inquiry through their consultation of varied resources to explore their own questions.  An excellent resource, and in my opinion, the best book on designing interdisciplinary, thematic curriculum is The Interdisciplinary Teacher's Handbook - Integrated Teaching Across the Curriculum, by Stephen Tchudi and Stephen Lafer.

Teachers can begin a theme study by looking into any source of themes and can guide students to formulate questions for interdisciplinary study by examining the theme through different lenses.  By accessing a variety of resources that contain information pertinent to those questions, teachers and students may become co-inquirers into the theme, exploring the meanings of their theme study in as many ways as their resources permit.  Through such thematic studies, inquirers develop their knowledge and their abilities to direct the course of their own learning. (from "Topics and Themes in Interdisciplinary Curriculum", by Gillian E. Cook and Marian L. Martinello, Middle School Journal 25, no. 3, (1994): 40-44.)

I recommend the article "Cross-Curricular Thematic Instruction" by Mary Ellen Vogt for excellent suggestions on how to select a theme for your unit.  Any of the following possible themes can be broken down into multiple sub-themes and can be the basis for an interdisciplinary unit.  Many can be an overarching theme for the entire school year, with a different sub-theme selected for each six weeks period.

Theme Ideas