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How do you keep children interested in science?
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I would say making sure there is a variety of ways to teach them. They get bored of just watching,reading and taking notes. They need to do hands on activities and have them role play. They enjoy doing things that involve them being able to manipulate things as well as getting to move around.
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I liked this question because it if we can figure figure out a way to keep children interested in science, they may not lose interest in the future. To keep children interested in science, I would provide plenty of different activities throughout the school year. I would also provide different ways to teach the material because it can become boring to sit there and just listening to lectures all day and taking notes. I would also provide how science relates to the real world.
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It always help to have them do something hands on. Let them make their own observations about certain things instead of you giving them all the information. Make them find out the information by themselves. It is better when you guide them and let them lead and make their own inferences about situations.
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It is best to keep kids interested in science by providing hands-on activities and link content to real life. Hope this helps!
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Hands on activities and linking content to real life is very good advice! One thing that I have found that helps is to do things that make you as the teacher feel uncomfortable. Leave the lesson in the hands of the students. I am in a preservice program and this semester we have been practicing inquiry based learning with students in all types of different schools. Inquiry based learning was something I was very uncomfortable and unfamiliar with at first but the more I practiced the better I got at it. I would go into a lesson with a very loose idea of what we would be doing that day and I left the rest to my students. Surprisingly the lesson always went in the direction I wanted it to or even farther. Instead of explaining a phenomenon to students I would answer there questions with additional questions like "why do you think that?" or "how can we figure that out?" We did activities like planting radish seeds, visiting a learning garden, and building candy cars and seeing what would make them go the farthest. Each of these lessons was student led and taught larger more complex ideas like force and motion for candy cars. The possibilities are endless and the students loved it! Best of luck!
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I agree with you in that it helps to do things that make you feel uncomfortable. Letting the students have a bigger role within the teaching setting allows for better communication among students and creates a more motivated environment. I am just now entering my methods classes for elementary education. I have found that creating lessons and making myself uncomfortable makes me more relatable with the students because we are both learning. The additional questioning of my future students is a helpful suggestion. I really enjoyed hearing your thoughts on how trying new things can be beneficial and soon become second nature.
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I most definitely agree that hands on activities are the key to keep students engaged. Also having students getting to explore on their own before a lesson gets students interested in the science lesson. I have also been learning about the inquiry based learning approach and I think that is great to use when teaching science. Students will learn more from answering their own questions than being given a bunch of information that will most likely will not be remembered the next day.
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I think keeping children interested in science is best done by providing them with the opportunity to explore and discover on their own. The teacher should be the facilitator. Help the students by providing hands-on and collaborative lessons. Let your students see, and experience the concept, don't just tell them about it.
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I am a preservice elementary teacher right now, and this is one of my favorite topics to discuss. I'm very interested in finding ways to engage students in learning. I found that a good way to answer this question is to think about how you like to learn. No, not every student learns the way you do, but for the most part, humans like to learn things by being active. If you can come up with hands-on activities, or an assignment that requires them to come up with their own ideas, these will get students on their feet and become active participants.
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To really get children engaged, I absolutely love the Phenomenon-Based Learning Gizmos & Gadgets books from NSTA Press. Here’s the elementary version:
http://www.nsta.org/store/product_detail.aspx?id=10.2505/9781936959389
The activities are both engaging and pedagogically effective, as described in the book’s Introduction.
There are kits of materials designed to go with the book that are sold by Arbor Scientific:
http://www.arborsci.com/nsta-es-kits
The kits are expensive, but they give you enough materials for dozens of activities and would be a great investment for any school, even without the books. If you have funds for materials, definitely consider them.
Iris
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Students today use technology effectively and often. How can I integrate technology into my science classroom to play to my students' strengths and get them engaged?
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One of the most effective ways I have used technology is transferring our method of notebooking to digital notebooks. In my lab, we use Seesaw to record our process and discoveries and this creates a quick and easy collaborative community for my students to ask questions about each others' work and to (kindly and constructively) critique one another's processes.
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I believe a good way to keep children interested and engaged in science is to teach things that are relevant to them. Also, by allowing science to be collaborative and exploratory!
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Keeping kids engaged is all about letting them do things hands-on and explore as much as possible!
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I would say the most interesting thing to do is keep it fun! Always go for hands on because that is how kids will learn. Take it outside or have the kids work together, or show videos, images, talk about experiences, or even act it out! There are so many creative ideas to do depending on the content and safety.
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