All Hands on Deck!

Have “Hands-On” Work Dominate So many assignments can be turned into hands-on work, even if the assignment does not particularly call for it. Ever learn CPR via pen and paper? How did you learn first aid? Did you learn to wrap a first-aid bandage by reading? Reading about the Hudson River? What if you take a train ride along the river, get off and sit at the banks and experience its width, listen to the water, smell the river air, feel the air movement, and even hold an anemometer and compare its readings to those taken in another area?

The Science I Explored Brain scans showed that students who took a hands-on approach to learning has activation in sensory and motor-related parts of the brain when they later thought about concepts such as angular momentum and torque. “In many situations, when we allow our bodies to become part of the learning process, we understand better,” Beilock said. “Reading about a concept in a textbook or even seeing a demonstration in class is not the same as physically experiencing what you are learning about.” “When students have a physical experience moving the wheels, they are more likely to activate sensory and motor areas of the brain when they are later thinking about the science concepts they learned about,” said Beilock. “These sensory and motor-related brain areas are known to be important for our ability to make sense of forces, angles and trajectories. “Those students who physically experience difficult science concepts learn them better, perform better in class and on quizzes the next day, and the effect seems to play out weeks later, as well,” Beilock added. For Beilock, the findings stressed the importance of classroom practices that physically engage students in the learning process, especially for math and science. “In many situations, when we allow our bodies to become part of the learning process, we understand better,” Beilock said. “Reading about a concept in a textbook or even seeing a demonstration in class is not the same as physically experiencing what you are learning about. We need to rethink how we are teaching math and science because our actions matter for how and what we learn.”[1]

A Situation The educator notices that most of the assignments associated with the class social studies text are multiple choices or written question answering. Even though the questions are thought provoking, and some may even have children thinking critically; the teacher is aware of the slump in energy and behavioral issues that occur during the social studies part of the day.

Hands-On Learning in Your Classroom Hands-on learning looks at how humans learn by involving the body. While studying a topic with your students, think of a way to bring it to life by use of the hands. If the topic is explorers, make a paper sailor hat and watch a video pretending, by using your arms and hands to balance, that you are actually on the high seas. You are trying to connect to the people onboard by awakening sensory and motor skills. In other words, add a reenactment, artwork from the sailor’s point of view, a mini model of, or a virtual voyage. Take a creative chance to add to a lesson by having the children create something related or move their body or manipulate objects in some way. Say it with me: “Kids, let’s get our hands involved!” Can you see students in your classroom, moving about, manipulating objects, hands drawing and cutting, arms and hands pointing while acting out a scene, while exploring a topic?

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

—Aristotle

[1] Jann Ingmire, “Learning by doing helps students perform better in science,” UChicago News, Updated April 29, 2015, https://news.uchicago.edu/story/learning-doing-helps-students-perform-better-science.