Some schools pair The Old Man and the Sea with a marine biology unit, having students research the actual behavior and biology of marlins, sharks, and open-ocean ecosystems alongside their literary study of the novella. This kind of cross-curricular pairing produces genuinely interesting student writing, but it also creates a real grading challenge when English and science departments haven't agreed in advance on shared standards.

A common assignment in this pairing asks students to write an essay evaluating the scientific accuracy of Hemingway's descriptions of marine life alongside their literary function, which requires a rubric that genuinely blends scientific accuracy criteria with literary analysis criteria rather than favoring one discipline over the other.

Without a jointly developed rubric, students often receive inconsistent signals, praised for scientific research in their science class while receiving criticism for insufficient literary analysis in English, or the reverse, which undermines the value of the cross-curricular design entirely.

The most successful versions of this unit involve English and science teachers co-designing a single shared rubric before the assignment is given, explicitly weighting both scientific accuracy and literary analysis so students understand both are genuinely required, not one dressed up as the other.

Building a Shared Cross-Curricular Rubric

A shared rubric for this kind of assignment needs distinct sections for scientific content and literary analysis, graded somewhat independently, along with a section assessing how well the essay actually integrates the two rather than treating them as separate halves of the same paper.

• Accurately represents marine biology concepts relevant to the novella's central events
• Evaluates where Hemingway's descriptions align with or diverge from scientific accuracy
• Analyzes the literary effect of Hemingway's choices regardless of scientific precision
• Integrates scientific and literary observations rather than presenting them separately
• Cites both literary and scientific sources appropriately and distinctly

Dividing Grading Responsibility Between Departments

Some schools split grading responsibility, with the science teacher assessing accuracy and the English teacher assessing literary analysis and writing quality, then combining scores using an agreed-upon weighting. This division of labor works well as long as both teachers have reviewed the same rubric and calibrated their expectations together beforehand.

Without this calibration step, split grading can produce inconsistent results, since a science teacher unfamiliar with literary analysis standards might grade the literary component too leniently or too harshly relative to what an English teacher would expect.

What Students Gain From This Pairing

Beyond the grading logistics, students engaging in this kind of cross-curricular assignment tend to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how authors make deliberate choices that diverge from strict factual accuracy for literary effect, a lesson that's harder to teach convincingly within a single-subject unit.

This kind of unit also demonstrates to students that rigorous writing skills transfer across disciplines, which is a valuable message for students who may see English and science as entirely separate, unrelated domains of study.

Practical Scheduling Considerations

Coordinating timelines between two departments requires more advance planning than a standard single-subject unit, since both teachers need aligned deadlines for research, drafting, and final submission that fit within each class's independent pacing calendar.

Schools that have run this pairing successfully for multiple years tend to have a shared planning document that both departments revisit and adjust annually, rather than renegotiating the entire structure from scratch each time the unit comes around.