April 7 In-Class Activity

Scenario #8 from the vignettes we reviewed in class today is an activity I would not choose to use in my classroom. In this scenario, the teacher teaches a recycling unit by presenting important information about recycling to her students. Recycling is such a broad topic that can be presented in so many interesting, engaging, and applicable ways--to simply dictate the key information to the students seems like such a poor method to teach-- not to mention boring and a quick way to disinterest students in recycling (which can be made very fun and in turn, promote helping the environment if kids are positively influenced by this topic!)
This teaching method would not be meaningful for the students. Recycling is an everyday 'real life' activity-so it should be presented as such and connected to the student's lives. This lesson should be interactive and engaging, and well as inquiry-promoting. I would teach this lesson instead by asking students if they know what recycling is, and weather their families or anyone they know recycles, and if so what items do they recycle. I will then ask them how they think recycling works, and scaffold this to make sure the information is presented correctly. I would then share interesting statistics about recycling to draw interest from the class (i.e. how much money can be saved, what will happen if we don't recycle, percentage of people who do recycle, etc). I would let the students research recycling and allow them to make classroom posters to remind students to recycle things such as paper and pop cans- which we could then hang from our classroom and keep recycling bins there (or in the halls to encourage other classes to recycle), encouraging them to come up with their own recycling ideas. We could donate pop can money to a charity, which would promote giving as well. I may also do an activity where students bring in old material and recycle it to make something useful-which would be fun and allow the students to generate their own creations.
Another scenario that simply focused on rote learning and therefore I wouldn't choose to teach in my own classroom is scenario #1, which states that “You, as a teacher, are teaching a unit on space. Each day during the unit you read to the class from a chapter book about the solar system. After reading about a particular planet, you ask students to make a statement on the board for inclusions in a letter sent home to parents at the end of the day.” This is another boring, unengaging activity for students. Instead, I would allow kids to explore online individually to see what information they could find about our solar system, which we then could discuss as a whole class lesson and clear up any misconceptions. I would promote inquiry by asking them find ways in which scientists have discovered these truths about the solar system, then let them do a project where they build a model of some part of the solar system and explain how it works.