Activitymania

"Activitymania: is an approach to teaching elementary science that involves a collection of prepackaged, hour-long (or less), hands-on activities that are often disconnected from each other. Each activity has a definite beginning, middle, and end. In contrast, inquiry is the process of searching for patterns and relationships in the world around us. Inquiry cannot be prepackaged as it takes different directions according to students' interests and questions related to the concept being studied."

In this article Shifting from Activitymania to Inquiry by Hedy Moscovici and Tamara Holmlund Nelson, they state how students are more interested in science if they are engaged and excited about the lesson and the topic. They should be questioning the lessons, and they will have the

"opportunities to use their experiences and observations as the basis for science learning, science becomes relevant, stimulating, integrated, and accessible to everyone."

Teachers must use this interest to keep the students intrigued throughout the lesson, and they must explain what they want the students to learn by this lesson. Even though the teacher may have a specific goal they have in mind, while they are teaching the lesson something new may come up and then they will adapt the lesson depending on the new change of lesson. It is more important for the lesson to educate the students with a goal in mind, but to keep the students engaged for them to research and learn more about the new questions that have arose by themselves.

"Activitymania is one way science has entered elementary classrooms. It is a step away from teacher-directed, textbook-centered elementary science. It is now time to go a step further and make the shift toward inquiry. Modifications can be made to existing science programs (e.g., kits, texts) to meet criteria for inquiry science...."

As a future teacher, we must be able to move away from following exact textbooks and guidelines and instead teach to actually educate the students about more important information that actually affects the students' lives.