Thinking

I did a horrendous thing today. I made the kids think. The fifth grade team of teachers recently planned out our new science unit. We planned several activities and experiments and one of the things that we planned was reading from the science book. I know that this reading can get complicated and a little dry at times so I try to spice it up a little. For example, tomorrow the kids are designing roller coasters. Today, however, I created an activity guide (fancy name for a worksheet) that guided them through the reading. It had a series of questions on it that were not directly in the text, they required the kids to actually read and understand what they had read in order to answer the questions. We went over part of it in class and the kids did great on the first question and everyone missed the second one we went over. The reason they missed the second one was because they didn’t go back and use what they had learned in the first question to answer the second. I was really happy with the effort the kids put in and I can’t wait to see their finished work tomorrow. I also can’t wait to see their roller coasters.