Ready or Not! Be Prepared.

Gather Materials in Advance

Being prepared for your day adds to the ease and flow of the day.

When do you get the ingredients for a special family dinner? When do you wash your clothes for the week? When do you get ready for a special day? A week before? The day before? That morning? An hour before?

The Science I Explored

Task preparation allows us to react flexibly and rapidly to environmental events and to plan actions in advance to concrete environmental conditions.[1]

A Situation

It is Monday morning, and the educator has an awesome idea for measuring speed, distance, and force using balloons, straws, strings, and tape measures. The teacher walks into class and realizes there is only tape measures and straws in the classroom.

Advanced Preparation

Discuss the ideas you are interested in exploring with the students. For example, discuss the day that will be best to engage in the testing of speed, distance, and force of a given object. (Consider how long it will take to gather the material.)

Pick a day to gather the materials needed.

Come in ready and prepared with all you need.

Add “jobs” for each student as well.

Think about possible scenarios for the activities, how students will record data, and even the amount of physical space needed to complete the activity. Do you see that checklist of materials needed in your hand?

Say it with me: “I’m showing up ready.” Now scan the list with your finger, what’s hardest to get on the list and where can you get it?

Explore

[1] Sudevan, P. and Taylor, D.A. “The cueing and priming of cognitive operations,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 13, no. 1 (1987) 89–103.