Student Centred. Hands-On Learning. It WORKS!

TEP Value #4: Reflective Practice

Throughout my practicum experience, I explored different classroom compositions, groupings, and the way I taught using differentiated instruction. I was noticing more and more the make-up of my classroom and how social, and engaged my students were when they were put into small group tables and able to work through problems on their own. The students enjoyed the challenges as they were required to work with materials and critically think about their learning process and be able to justify their process. Many of the students who struggled academically strived throughout this process and found success. 

I decided that as I went through my practicum, I was leaning further and further to the side of exploration, inquiry, and critical challenges as a way to teach the students to create a student-centered classroom.  The students were so engaged anytime we did experiments, were actively participating with their bodies through physical activity, or exploring how to accomplish a task with just enough instruction to try something their own way. This was evident through my human body unit for science. The students were so excited to participate in every experiment because it allowed them to explore aspects they were interested in, while working in small groups of differing academic abilities. Yet, I never did notice a difference in participation of students based on that, rather the extension of their individual learning increased. I attribute this to the level of their engagement, and to the memory of the experience. 

Throughout my methods courses and practice, I have realized the utmost importance of engagement levels of students to increase their success and learning. Throughout my classroom research course, I formulated an Action Research Project based on this topic. The following is my reflection and question because of this: 

REFLECTION

“To learn to succeed, you must first learn to fail” a quote from Michael Jordan, inspired me throughout my learning experience and something I truly believe. Throughout my practicum experience, students were at varying stages of their learning. Some students needed additional support, where others needed to be challenged. Many times students were just told to silent read when completed an assignment, worksheet or other work, while those who needed additional support could receive it.  There were various strategies implemented for differentiated learning to support all students but something I noticed that was impossible to deny was during one unit of mine in particular.

With my science unit, I incorporated many hands on learning experiments where the students were challenged with finding the answer themselves while using select criteria for judgment. This process allowed all students to discover answers, which made a noticeable difference in their level of engagement, as students could not wait to get their hands on the materials. In many circumstances, students would not discovery the answer right away, however they persevered and tried another approach until they were able to achieve the task using the criteria for judgment, or until a fellow classmate was successful. My question for the result of this type of learning environment stems from the quote “Children will forget what you say, Children forget what you do, but children never forget how you make them feel.”

QUESTION

My question originates from my personal experiences of hands-on learning being more engaging and enjoyable and the observations of the students in the class during my practicum. This is important to investigate further as the classroom is often taught through teacher directed instruction and I believe in “doing to learn” process. To investigate this process further, by using a survey of a grade 5 elementary school classroom of 21 students and 3 interviews of 3 of these students will be used to view how and why hands-on discovery (inquiry) based learning can cause students to all participate regardless of academic ability without having the need for differentiated instruction.

This Action Research really opened up my eyes to just how important knowing the students, knowing the content, being prepared, and being open to letting the students drive their learning, and the teacher as the facilitator. Because of this experience and learning for myself, I will continue to infuse my classes with experiential learning for the sake of the students benefit. From my Action Research, students shared that they felt they learned more from the experiential learning because they were fun, they were able to remember the experience and they got to try it on their own first. How can I ignore what my students have said?