As an effort to support our Social Studies School Service community of administrators and educators, we are now providing reflections from our webinars. Below are highlights from the webinar, “Increase Retention by Utilizing Hands-on Learning,” which was hosted by Dr. Aaron Willis.
This topic can be used to support secondary or elementary social studies, utilizing hands-on learning in the social studies classroom, and meeting C3 inquiry social studies standards.
Watch our Increase Retention by Utilizing Hands-on Learning webinar here!
Main Theme(s)
Hands-on Learning and the Brain
Let’s start by looking at what brain processes can tell us about how K-12 students learn, according to Differentiation and the Brain:
- Students retain information longer if what they are learning is “meaningful” to them.
- Learning is largely based on the brain’s ability to make connections between new and familiar “patterns.”
- Engaging multiple modes of learning using as many media and group configurations as possible increases chances students will find meaning and therefore recall information.
Building on Prior Knowledge
The idea of building on prior knowledge has been an imperative for teachers for a long time when it comes to supporting recall in students, and for a good reason.
“Brain scans have confirmed that when new learning is readily comprehensible (makes sense) and can be connected to past experiences (has meaning), there is substantially more cerebral activity, followed by dramatically improved retention” (Differentiation and the Brain p. 49).
Benefits of Hands-on Learning
Hands-on learning helps develop the skills students need to understand their impact on a changing world and how to live in it. Skills include:
- curiosity
- initiative
- persistence/grit
- adaptability
- and leadership
These skills are central to living in a changing world, and empower students by making them feel capable of addressing life’s challenges. Additionally, hands-on learning can foster neural connections between self and place, allow for a growth mindset, enhance student collaboration skills, and teach how to solve real-world problems.
Teacher Benefit
Using hands-on programs that incorporate a variety of learning modalities will not guarantee success, but it will certainly increase teacher chances to engage students in meaningful ways. These meaningful experiences will ultimately facilitate long-term retention, and more student engagement, and decrease the likelihood of discipline problems.
Activity
Here’s a sample from the lesson that we can use, taken directly from the teacher’s guide for Encompass and pages 28 and 29 from the atlas. Looking directly at the atlas, you can ask questions to your students and prompt them to use circles, squares, and triangles to map out various geographical features. Then, you can use a graphic organizer to help students collaborate to write a Letter to the Editor or create a project-based mural to wrap up your mapping activity. This type of activity helps students to remember important details and to develop those Collaborative Learning skills they would have used working in groups as they mark up their maps.
Additionally, students have opportunities to be leaders and to engage with each other to be curious, come up with creative ideas, and express themselves to show what they know as well as being creative in the process of thinking about what’s important to them.
Further Reflection
You can extend this activity by doing something else using a web-based resource like Google Maps or a free tool from National Geographic. It allows your class the opportunity to actually create a map by screenshotting your neighborhood. You can zero in on your own little neighborhood. As I’m demoing the National Geographic tool here, we can see where I’m located in Los Angeles, and I can go ahead and screenshot right where I’m at to see all the resources in my community.
Maps like Google Maps are available online or you could get a real map of your neighborhood to have students work with the physical map and print it in color. This speaks to some of the things that were discussed in the webinar about prior experience and making connections to things that are familiar with students. It’s one thing to discuss and map an abstract community, but it’s another thing altogether to talk about your local community. Here as you zoom in on a Google Map, you can see various things in a neighborhood, like museums, housing developments, etc., so these are all things that would be making use of a local neighborhood. Teachers can screen capture an area and cut that and paste that into a PowerPoint slide or show it on the screen for the students.
This could serve as evidence of your own local neighborhood and you could have students identify some of the places that are parks or what you can do in museums. You’ve got free resources out there on the internet to be able to print local maps. It’s really just the strategy of having students be able to mark it up, even if they’re not using an erasable marker, but maybe they’re marking up this print out and they’re engaging with the content.
Watch the full version of our webinar to learn more insights about hands-on learning here!
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About this webinar presenter:
Dr. Aaron Willis is the Chief Learning Officer for Social Studies School Service. He works with districts around the country to provide resources, strategies, and training to help teachers make meaningful connections with their students. He can be reached via email at [email protected].