Can boring be better?

The unit I planned for my students was stuffed with activities. We played games, watched videos, and looked at pictures. They designed timelines, wrote skits and comic strips, and compared ancient and modern social hierarchies. We did not read the text book or watch documentaries. We did not do worksheets, or drill vocab, and I did not lecture. I thought it was all fun and games. And it was. They were learning, but they were not piecing together all of the activities that I had planned. They could take any of them out of context and discuss them in detail, but they could not figure out how this whole unit tied together, except that it was all about this old place called Mesopotamia. On Friday, I had one student, then two, three, four....etc. asking to have something to read to piece the whole thing together.

What?! Students asking for something academic to read? So, I obliged, and I was impressed when they stayed focused on the article about ancient Mesopotamia I found for them for twenty whole minutes.

I read a section, then took volunteers, and I had eight or so students volunteer to read aloud to the class. Was it boring? Maybe a little. But did it help them make the connections they weren't able to in class? Yes.

I assumed that the students would be able to piece together the concepts I had laid out for them, but I was mistaken. Maybe in high school they would be able to understand what I was getting after, but not in middle school. One of my biggest struggles is figuring out what a seventh grade mind is capable of, but I realize now that above all else, they know themselves. They know all about themselves. They even know what they don't know.

I was glad they asked for a reading that tied together the loose ends of my unit, because without them asking for it, I would have never realized that boring could be better (when used in moderation).