Interactive lessons are the best! by Anna

Interactive lessons are the best! by Anna - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

I have heard a lot of scientists, teachers, and parents say that a high school student needs the most sleep. But as a high school student, I have found that we usually get the least amount of sleep. With all the homework, sports, clubs, and other things high school students do, we normally get less than the recommended 6-8 hours of sleep at night. Since we come to class like brain dead zombies, shouldn't class be fun? I think teachers should teach lessons with less motes and oral presentations, and instead make it more fun and interactive .

The last thing a student wants to do in the morning after getting very little sleep is take notes. I have heard that a high school student's brain doesn't even wake up until about 9 in the morning, which is much later than when school begins. I know that I barely remember my morning classes, and when I look at the other kids in my class, all I see are blank stares, messy hair, and Starbucks coffee cups. Notes are boring and they make your hand cramp, plus a lot of kids fall asleep during notes and miss vital information for their studies. Some teachers also give oral presentations, but those are just as boring. Notes are also hard for kids with reading disorders, ADD or ADHD, because you have to be paying close attention to write down all the information. I believe that classrooms should be more interactive.

Some of the best classes I've had had interactive lessons that I still remember today. For example, to remember how a lot of the assassinations happened in U.S. History, my teacher had us dress up and act it out. I remember it seeming silly when our teacher first asked us to act out the stories because we were Juniors in High School, not Kindergartners, but as the year progressed almost everyone wanted to be one of the actors/ actresses in an assassination. If we have to take a class, shouldn't we learn hands on what happened in history, math, or science and how it applies to our lives? Another teacher that I have had the pleasure of being a student under and teaches hands on learning is my Environmental Science teacher this year. She incorporates games into her lessons, so that we don't get bored. One of the games she made up to teach us about the energy pyramid involved a relay with popcorn. We had to carry popcorn back and forth between team members without dropping it, and the pieces that did drop represented the energy lost in an ecosystem as each predator hunts for prey. Lessons that allow students to interact help us to get to know our classmates better and motivate us to come to class.

I wish that all teachers would try to make their lessons fun. It's hard to cram all the information from notes into your brain, but games and stories make it a lot easier. I think interactive lessons are the best way to learn and should be considered for how classes are taught in the future.