Normally I write about how to engage or motivate students in our classroom, this week I focused on different types of activities that stimulated students to stay engaged. A lot of what I had found seemed to be geared towards computer oriented ideas, being that our students now live in a world where they seem to have to have something electronic in their life to stimulate or keep them entertained. This is not said in a negative way, it just shows what types of thinking and needs our students have when dealing in every day school, home or personal situations.
I found one source online called Engaging Science: http://www.engagingscience.org/Activities/
Here they had games for pollution, earth and space science and even physical science game. The website also offered some resources for teachers like guides, playbooks and workshop ideas.
This website http://engagetolearn.com/ETL/activities.htm seems to be geared towards the middle and high school ages; which is still important as a lot of students seem to lose interest in science for some unknown variable (to me). There are webquests by grade level areas, interactive lesson plans, and what appears to be a start of a zoo webquest. When I clicked on some areas, there were no links to find out more about some animals, so this might be a good starter, but something a teacher would have to add to to make up for the animals not covered (for some unknown reasons).
If your school offers a SMARTBoard opportunity, this website http://eduscapes.com/sessions/smartboard/ has a nice listing of Science and other curriculum opportunities for your students to learn and stay engaged. The site seems to indicate it is for SMARTBoard usage, but some links did work on my regular laptop and played videos or took me to other reputable sites like museums.
While I think all these offer great opportunities, we still need to make sure we find the time and offer the experience for actual hands on Inquiry to our students. Sometimes teachers get in a rut on how to keep their students engaged and know of a way to do that and veer in that direction and forget other opportunities that are essential. Keeping them engaged is a constant process as times are changing as well as demands from/for our students.
I like that you pointed out that while these activities can be effective in small doses, it is most important that we allow our students the hands on experiences of science. Videos, games or other activities can be a good way to grab students attention, or keep them engaged if they finish their work early. Professor Kruse has shown us that you can get students attention in low tech, inexpensive ways. If you want to teach students about solids and liquids. Show them an example of each and have them make observations.
ReplyDeleteRebecca,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post because I, too am blogging about how to keep your students engaged in science. I think all these activities can be beneficial to students as well as keep them interested. I think it's important that you mentioned how keeping your students motivated is an ongoing process and can be very hard at times. While your students are working, there is so much going on in your head as a teacher. It takes practice to keep students interested and can be difficult to find the right activities to do with your students, the best as you mentioned, are those hands on activities, the more concrete the better.
I love that you mentioned the SMARTboard. I think a SMARTboard could be incredibly useful and beneficial in a science classroom. Although I have heard a lot of interesting things about the SMARTboards, I am very unfamiliar with them. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that I am not the only one. We tend to stray away from technology that we are not comfortable using. I think it's sad that we have this technology available to us and we choose not to use it. I think a course (even just an hour or two) would be very beneficial to the teachers and students. If we have this great technology available to us, why not use it??
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