using books

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using books
By Julianne

Align your hands-on science activity with a small portion of the book. You can then decide whether to do the hands-on or the book part first depending on how much information you want your students to have before they see
the experiment. I would tend to go with the hands-on stuff first, then reinforce it with the book. Divide the group into investigative teams. Each team needs a reader, a recorder, and a reporter. These jobs should rotate. The reader reads a selected portion of the text. The group then discusses how this relates to the experiment they just did. The recorder writes down any conclusions

the team reaches, any additional experiments they would like to perform, and any questions they may have. When you meet back with the whole group, the reporter tells what their team discovered. If you have them do the reading first, have the teams predict what they think will happen during the hands-on portion, or have them actually design the hands-on portion if you think they are up to it. I see no reason for them to have to write the answers to the questions at the ends of the chapters as individuals. Could you do that as a whole-group activity? Ask the questions and record the class's answers to them. Everyone learns and no one is stuck writing answers to questions on a Sunday night when their mother would love to go to bed but can't until the science homework is done. (Can you tell where I've been???)