Schedule of Events

    Our work was based on the concept of active learning in the classroom and effective ways to implement it into a unit plan for elementary school students. The purpose of our work was to successfully create and teach a unit plan composed of four lesson plans that we each created. The lesson plans also focused on cultivating new ideas and developing skills. The definition that we created for this purpose was that active learning is when students engage in instructional material and apply new material in a participatory and collaborative environment. In order to acheive this purpose, our methods included class games and community building activities, whole class and group work, and student presentations of this work. 

An overwhelming amount of classroom students are taught in a way that does not enable them to be active learners. It is up to the teacher to facilitate a non-passive learning technique through active learning strategies that is appropriate for all learning abilities and developmental phases. Purpose: The purpose of our research is to understand the the development of children and to be able to effectively create lesson and unit plans involving active learning techniques. This will facilitate mastery of information by the students. Method: To begin our research, we built a foundation based on articles and textbook material to deeper understand the importance of developmental stages and teaching techniques, as well as further comprehend the role of community building and active learning in the classroom. We then built this research into separate lesson plans within units to put the theory of active learning into practice. Results: Students will find the curriculum of active learning to be more engaging and therefore take a non-passive role in their education. This will facilitate the mastery of information as well as create an environment that promotes advancement for all students, regardless of ability level.

As up and coming teachers in today’s world, we’ve been studying and implementing active learning strategies into lesson planning because we believe it leads to higher success and a more effective understanding of knowledge within students. Our research provides that active learning techniques are conducive to deeper comprehension and retention levels of students and aims for engaging students at a higher level by assimilating the material rather than absorbing it. First, we researched developmental theorists like Vygotsky, Piaget and Bandura and how their findings tied into our rationale of active learning. We found strategies on how to build community and finally, specific active learning strategies to implement into the classroom. We took all of these components and each created our own unit to teach in a second grade classroom. By incorporating active learning strategies, we found the engagement, skill development and understanding of the content taught to be at an outstanding level. Utilizing these strategies can only benefit the students being taught and used as an aid for effective teaching.

Through active learning, students are able to be at the center of all activities while thinking critically about how what they do applies to their learning. Active learning helps to meet the needs of every student and has been shown to foster growth of students both inside and outside of the classroom. The purpose of our research is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a multitude of active learning strategies in an elementary school classroom and its benefit on students engagement and comprehension in the activities. Through the teaching of a unit inside an elementary school classroom, we will show how building of community is an important first step of achieving effective active learning. We will also include various active learning strategies to allow for the students to make their learning process both enjoyable and applicatory to maximizing their learning, lengthening their attention span, and providing both leadership and communication skills. Our research will provide the findings for show that the use of active learning strategies help improve student focus and engagement, help them connect what they learn in the classroom to their day to day lives, and help them develop their ability to think critically.

Classroom environments are changing to become more student centered and involve the students in active learning. Active learning is an instructional approach in which students are engaged in the learning process through a variety of hands on activities that allow for exploration, interaction with their peers and teacher, and reflection on what was learned. Our research looked at how effective active learning is in the classroom. The purpose of our research was to observe and analyze how active learning affected lessons in the classroom. First, we defined what active learning is, why it is beneficial in the classroom and ways to implement active learning in the classroom. We each then researched 4th grade, 3rd grade and 1st/2nd grade standards to coincide with a unit that we would be teaching in a classroom. During each lesson, we used diagnostic, formative and summative assessments to see how well the students were learning and if the active learning strategies were benefiting the students. Active learning has a positive influence on learning. The students were engaged throughout the unit we were teaching in the classroom. It is important to keep your students engaged and have an understanding of what is going on in the lesson. For example, TPE #5: Student engagement is important to successfully teach your students. We have found that active learning is a very effective way of teaching. It allows for maximum understanding and comprehension of content matter while at the same time keeping students engaged and interested.

Active learning is an student-centered instructional method that is aimed at making the learning process more effective. Active learning assists with improving student engagement. It is beneficial because it fosters personal and collective growth in the classroom. It is integral to a classroom because it seeks to meet the needs of each individual student. Active learning has proven to help students succeed in the long run, both in and outside of the classroom. The purpose of our research is to determine the effectiveness of active learning strategies in elementary school students in comparison with traditional, lecture-style teaching practices. Throughout a unit, we will use active learning strategies to further student engagement within the classroom. We will implement active learning strategies throughout each lesson to incite growth within the classroom community. Students will understand and demonstrate knowledge of content by making their learning process meaningful. Throughout our research we found that active learning strategies are crucial to authentic learning in elementary aged students. Active learning requires the student to participate in all six stages of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The methodology behind active learning meets the teaching performance expectations that all teachers in California are required to meet within the classroom. This can be exemplified by the way active learning encourages critical thinking (TPE #1) and is student centered (TPE #4). These results provide feedback for future classroom activities in which active learning can be implemented.

Active learning is an emerging teaching strategy backed by sound psychological theory. The implementation of active learning strategies in the classroom is often both intimidating and confusing to teachers. However, doing so, and doing so well, creates a more effective learning experience for both students and teachers. The purpose of this study was to implement active learning strategies through the course of an entire instructional unit in two different grade levels, and then to subsequently assess the degree of understanding on the subject material achieved by the students. We began the study by researching the psychological theories behind active learning. We then proceeded to work towards a greater understanding of the importance of creating a classroom community as well as how to implement it. The final step prior to creating lesson plans was researching tried and true active strategies that had previously been implemented by other teachers. Finally we created a series of four standards focused lessons taught via active learning strategies. We then taught the lessons and assessed student comprehension and achievement via the work they produced, which differed lesson by lesson, and the accuracy of questions that they answered orally. 

In this research, we investigated the success of active learning in two elementary school classrooms at the second and fifth grade levels in mathematics. We analyzed how the implementation of active learning can vigorously engage students and result in a collaborative learning environment. We define the term active learning as a process in which students vigorously engage in the curriculum as they participate in a collaborative environment during the application of new materials. As supporters of the implementation of active learning in standard lessons, we scoped out opportunities within those lessons to implement active learning strategies and reconstructed them in order to get the students moving physically, while also opening their minds to new concepts and techniques to expand their knowledge. We taught a total of eight lessons combined; one of us taught four in a second grade classroom and the other taught four in a fifth grade classroom. With the implementation of active learning, we observed the students' active engagement and understanding of the concepts being taught, along with their motivation to continue to expand their knowledge.

Active learning takes a step away from traditional methods of teaching by encouraging students to explicitly think about the things that they are doing in the classroom — a classroom that offers a safe, participatory, and collaborative environment. The goal of our three active learning units was to implement more effective ways of engaging students in the classroom through several creative processes. While creating these units, we based our active learning strategies upon Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bandura’s theories of learning and development. Our three teaching units included lessons about adjectives, Thanksgiving, and nail string art. We implemented active learning into these units through enactments, group work, rotating centers, miniature theatrical performances, parades, writing workshops, and hands-on activities. After linking our active learning theories to practice, our students were noticeably more engaged in the subject matter at hand, and each class gained a better understanding of the standards covered.

Education has been built upon the ideals that the most effective education is lecture format. However, new methodology is appearing and breaking down the preconceived notions of what successful teaching looks like. Active learning is one beneficial tool that teachers can use to provide their students an opportunity for a more effective education. Our purpose is to show that using active learning strategies directly reflects the quality of comprehension and understanding in students, but also leads to growth in development. Our method includes the importance of building community within a classroom and how active learning helps us achieve this. We then looked at learning theories such as Vygotsky and Piaget. The theorists ideas on how children learn provided a base understanding of how active learning can benefit children from birth to adolescents. We also researched learning strategies and compared how the different activities could benefit with different subject matter and age. Lastly, we took our findings and applied them to a classroom setting by teaching a unit. We found that having an understanding of how students learn through Vygotsky and Piaget’s theories and dictating which active learning strategy fits their needs leads to immense levels of comprehension across all age groups. Utilizing active learning strategies also promoted leadership skills, established community within classrooms, and allowed students to work with the form of intelligence they excel most. These findings provided the foundation for more research into the benefits of active learning across educational settings of all ages.