How can you make a classroom interactive for all ages…
Depending on the grade level, science (specifically) needs to have a practical lesson every week if not more. Lower grades can be taught the conceptual concepts:
1. Recycling
2. Water Cycle
3. The Environment
etc.
Within these topics, it is very easy to take a take, prepare a lesson and notify the students that they will have a "lab" tomorrow, or the following class. Recycling can be easy especially if you gat the home-life involved too! Tell the students to bring in an old shoe box or something cardboard. From there you can create a list of things to make! Making gifts and anything actually tangible makes learning easier and it creates a better visual for a school subject.
When older grades come about it's the same exact concepts and topics, however, the labs become more involved and in depth. The more that science is provided as a hands on class experience, the better off the students can and will learn
Great points- most would agree that an interactive and hands-on classroom (science or not) is a great place for learning! It is hard execute, but so important. I loved teaching science, but it was such a struggle for one main reason- I never had a sink in my classroom! I would drag in all kinds of things for students to explore- rocks, lobster traps, stumps, leaves....and we would always make such a mess. It would have been awesome if there was an elementary science lab that we could "sign out" and carry out more indepth and messier experiments! We would always end up moving the science experiment aside to make room for the reading group later. :)
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