Interactive Science | Dunking Duckies- Endless Expansion And Contraction

When students walk into your classroom and see dunking ducks everywhere, each will express their amazement differently. Some will stop in the doorway and stare. Others will get a friend to show. The rest will go to their seat and begin studying the motions of duck. They’ll remember that days like today are why they like science. And for good reason- the dunking duck is fascinating to watch and simple to understand, as it’s presented today (they’ll be explaining to you how it works later on). The potential topics you can cover with the dunking duck is almost limitless, so don’t feel limited to the discussion that follows. If you’d like to go further, type “dunking ducks” and “drinking birds” into an online search engine. You’ll be in for some very interesting reading. FREE Teacher Notes preview

Over-Prepared

Yes, being physically and mentally prepared is vital to creating a learning environment where your students can succeed. But it is possible to over-prepare and spend too much time thinking through too many details. Don’t script so much that you are mechanical and can’t react to anything. If you thought that being unprepared was stressful, you’re right. But it can be stressful when you’re over-prepared because things will never go exactly the way you planned. You’ll go crazy trying to predict the unpredictable. And that’s not good for anybody.

So what do you do? Go into each lessons knowing your major points and having a firm grasp on how the discussion will flow, but don’t plan every single word you will say. Leave enough room for students to help you get there in the natural flow of things. That way is more enjoyable and meaningful for everyone.

Being Busy

Do you remember the magician from Frosty The Snowman? He was so “busy, busy, busy!”. That describes Americans today- always in a hurry trying to accomplish more than we have time for. But things done in a hurry are seldom done well, and that includes in our classrooms as well.

Being busy is not in itself a bad thing, and having more activities than we have time for should theoretically result in a better learning environment since we should be choosing the best and most effective lessons from the list (we’ll call this the natural selection of lesson plans). But sometimes activities are done just for the sake of doing them, and if most of what we’re “teaching” our students will soon be forgotten, then what’s the point of even doing it?

Our Interactive lessons take a balanced approach. They don’t try to go all directions at once, nor is it all fluff and fun. There is terminology, but we also want to develop the creative and practical part of each student’s mind. Each lesson stays steadily focused on just 1 thing or theme from beginning to end. They tend to be more simple and quiet, so that your students can keep a sustained thought, and actually have some room left over in their minds to think creatively and to explore.

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