Activities in a Science Classroom
Games and activities in the classroom are a great way to help students stay on task and learn at the same time.
By Colette Crafton
When I'm at home with my kids, I love to have them help me with different tasks around the house. They enjoy cooking, gardening, and even folding clothes. I don’t know if it is just me, but as a science teacher, I find myself narrating every activity and relating it back to some classroom concept. Folding clothes is all about symmetry, gardening inspires conversation about photosynthesis, and cooking provides an experiment opportunity. As we fry an egg, we can see the proteins change as they become opaque right before our eyes!
Ideas for hands-on learning
I am sure teachers of all disciplines have similar stories to share. Every semester, we teachers start off with optimistic and inspiring plans. However, after a few months, we find ourselves consumed with grading and classroom discipline. Communicating concepts becomes dry. We don't always get a chance to make learning fun. One of my goals as an instructor is to try to include one hands-on activity per day. Consequently, I created puzzle maps of cells that stimulate higher thinking, and various experiments using ice and water.
Getting outside of the classroom
Sometimes, these hands-on activities take place outside of the classroom. Worksheets guide my young scientists to find flowers in different stages of development, or insects in different habitats. On the playground, they enjoy drawing a heart and lungs on the blacktop with chalk. After drawing the flow of blood in these organs, they run through the veins and arteries shouting as they pick up oxygen. Another favorite illustrating activity is drawing the rainbow of colors which results from light passing through a prism or raindrop. As a busy teacher, the trick for me is to find games or tasks that don’t need extra supplies, a long list of instructions, or extensive safety talks. If students learn through a game, and from each other, they are more likely to stay focused and retain the material.
Mixing art with other disciplines
A favorite teaching style of mine is to incorporate other disciplines with art. Just as they did with the blacktop drawings, my students enjoy opportunities to create lovely crafts from unexpected science topics. Paper-mache planets are pretty common, but often take up too much lesson time. A variation on this idea that takes less time is to make a mobile illustrating the size and distance differential of the planets. Material could be as simple as colorful beads. Or they could be more creative, like miniature Hello Kitty figures. I once had a student use mini skateboards of different colors and sizes! One of my most successful projects was using molding clay to create the layers in sedimentary rock. After we layered the clay, we used straws to get a core sample. Once our samples hardened, we strung it on a necklace.
Whatever the activity, if we teachers can think of simple projects to demonstrate a concept, our students will absorb and retain the material. It is also likely that despite our busy schedules, we will find that we are implementing some of the inspiring ideas that we had in September.
More Helpful Science Lessons:
This is a great lesson to stimulate thinking about general physics ideas, while also incorporating concepts about products and manufacture. Students will investigate how common toys work.
This activity is a perfect example of a relatively easy practical that demonstrates concepts as you go. Students will observe three different kinds of rocks and then create the life cycle of a rock using supplies such as foil and crayons.
Students will investigate different brands of paper towels in this experiment. They will test the absorbency and strength of each brand, and will record their results. This lesson demonstrates how fun science can be.