Shifting from Activitymania

The authors of this article have surveyed and interviewed practicing and prospective teachers in order to explore classroom practices in different districts at the K-12 level. Often the science instruction in the elementary classroom is in the form of what authors call activitymania. Activitymania is approach to teaching elementary science that involves a collection of prepackaged, hour long, hands-on activities that are often disconnected to each other. Instead the authors advocate for an inquiry as a way of teaching science.  Inquiry is the process of searching for the patterns and relationships in the world around us.
With activitymania preparation of materials are teacher's responsibility while with inquiry they are used upon students' request and are both responsibility of teacher and the students. Inquiry takes different directions according to students' interests and questions related to the concept being studied.  The outcome of the activities in activitymania style of teaching are known by the teacher, published by text and most times known by students. In activitymania the hypothesis is already defined by the teacher prior to experimentation while in in inquiry it arises from students' questions and is based on their experiences. In activitymania students are passive participants. They follow prescribed procedures. When doing experiments they disregard results that do not match teacher's expectations.
Activitymania calls for immediate, product-oriented, right -answer assessments, whereas inquiry  supports long-term, process-oriented evaluations.
With inquiry as a teaching method, teachers develop rubrics that evaluate different processes of learning in his/her classroom.
In order to me to make a shift from activitymania to inquiry as a way of teaching science, I would have to define conceptual goals and the relationships  to students' lived and interest before I select classroom activities. I should ask my students questions to determine their experiences and possible questions they might have about certain scientific concepts. After I establish concepts I wish to teach  I would provide supporting activities that link and build understanding of the concepts I intend to teach. My role as a teacher would require a move from the traditional presenter of science. My role should be one of the experienced co-learner. Students would be able to discuss the findings of their experiments with me and their peers. During students' inquires I would guide, focus, challenge and encourage student learning.  I would provide individual help to students according to their needs.  I would promote inquiry by asking questions rather then giving answers.  Students would formulate their questions and devise ways to answer them.  They would make their hypothesis based on their questions and on their experiences.  Students would collect data and decide how to represent it. They would organize data from the experiments and make their own conclusions.  They would test the reliability of the conclusions they made.  In the end they would as groups   explain and justify their work in a presentation that models their scientific understanding.