Active Learning Strategies

Why is it important to use active learning strategies in your classroom?

Active learning strategies promote student learning and problem solving. After two weeks we tend to remember only ten percent of what we read, twenty percent of what we hear, and thirty percent of what we see. Those numbers are extremely low, but the good news is when you combine what you see and hear the number increases to fifty percent. Furthermore, if you say something there is a seventy percent chance you will remember it after two weeks, and when you combine saying something with doing something you will remember ninety percent of it. These statistics prove that if we want our students to learn and remember what they have learned we have to do more than merely tell them about it. We need to be providing active and hands on ways for students to explore learning new concepts and skills.

Here are some simple ways to start using active learning in your classroom.

Word splash is a collection of key terms or concepts connected to a topic. This is a great activity to use to gauge your students prior knowledge. Prior to learning about a topic have your students create a word splash to see what personal and academic connections they have to the topic. Students could also create another word splash after learning about the topic, by doing this it would create a cool visual that shows all things the student learned about the topic and how much they expanded their knowledge.
Walking Tour is an activity where the students are able to walk around stations and learn about a topic. The students are given a tour guide to help them. This guide has questions and activities for the students to complete at each station to provoke higher order thinking. Make sure the stations are diverse in their activities, but all still connected to the learning objective.

Interactive notebooks is one way that students can take notes in a more creative and engaging way than just writing one notebook paper. The purpose is for the students to organize and to take ownership of their work. This is a great place for the student to keep their foldables and important information they might need to help them study for a text or collect information for a project.