Activitymania

Sounds like my elementary experience. Kind of. In fact my elementary science experience was almost all out of the book. Not fun and not interesting. The worst part about activity boxes or things of that nature is that it seems like they are good. The article is right, they are just and extension of the direct instruction textbook. I hated things like this. I would sit in class and not know why I was doing the next thing. Well the sheet tells me to so I'll just do it to get it over with was my thinking in this. Or I would sit there and think, the last part wasn't even that interesting why am I continuing with this. I'm not learning anything of why it happens I just know that it happens.

This is a perfect example of why inquiry based learning is so important. Kids need to see it for themselves. Kids shouldn't have to think the things I thought when I was going through a pointless activity. There should be no pointless activities and they shouldn't be disjointed from each other. There should be some form of relate-ability with all of the inquiry we do. If you don't know why you're learning it then it isn't fun. I had a thought that when a student teacher walks into my classroom in the future or a substitute is subbing for me when it comes to class time they are going to see interest right off the bat. They might not even understand nearly as much as the kids because the kids will be the one getting down and dirty and learning things through their own exploration. It's a pretty awesome thing to think about. Kind of hard to keep a smile off my face.