Building the busy books for our insitue students was so very fun. I found that even though the kid I was working with did not have time to do any of the activities in the book during our time there he did look through it during our first session.
I find that it is a great idea for students who are early finishers that you don’t want to keep giving extra work to. It is also great for times where you might be giving some students help with a step, it gives students who are waiting for help something to do rather than talking or finding other disruptive things within the class.
As we have talked about in class each student having an individualized book may not be realistic as a teacher with 20+ students. One idea though may to as an icebreaker activity have students make busy books for another student with having to get to know each other enough to make a busy book to their interests and they can be used to see how well students remember content areas if the busy book requires something from the unit they just learned in science or another subject area as well.
This can support the BC curriculum through the core competency of social awareness and responsibility through the idea of taking care of their community, it is the classroom community but it does fall into a part of their community. It falls into the facet of building relationships “Students build and maintain diverse, positive peer and intergenerational relationships. They are aware and respectful of others’ needs and feelings and share their own in appropriate ways. They adjust their words and actions to care for their relationships.” They are building those relationships by having to get to know each other enough to build busy books for each other, and are getting used to being diverse with what their peers may need out of a busy book.