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Real-life example of a Pre-K PBL unit

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Teaching As Brain Changing: Exploring Connections between Neuroscience and Innovative Teaching

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Teaching As Brain Changing: Exploring Connections between Neuroscience and Innovative Teaching

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Melinda T. Owens and Kimberly D. Tanner

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Abstract

One would hope that of the many ways to conceptualize teaching and learning, scientists would view these processes as driving biological changes in the brain. Here, the authors draw connections between innovative teaching techniques and neuroscience that may support our understanding of why innovative teaching is so effective at promoting learning.

How do you conceptualize learning? Do you think of learning as a contractual agreement: the instructor performs certain actions to facilitate learning, and the student, in turn, explicitly or implicitly promises to behave in ways to receive that learning? Or do you think of learning in sociological terms: the learner, through what he or she learns, transforms his or her beliefs and becomes a more emancipated citizen of the world? Or perhaps you think of learning in psychological terms: learners are motivated, store facts in their minds, and create mental knowledge structures. All of these ways of conceptualizing learning can be beneficial in understanding how students learn and what makes teaching effective.

However, at their most fundamental and mechanistic level, teaching and learning are neurological phenomena arising from physical changes in brain cells. The notion that learning and memory are neurobiological processes is relatively young, dating back only to the 18th century ( Hartley, 1749 Herculano-Houzel, 2002 Deligiannidi and Howard-Jones, 2015 ; ). Nevertheless, recent advances in brain science have given us an in-depth picture of the molecular and cellular changes that occur during learning, and the consensus of neurobiologists is that these alterations are both necessary and sufficient for the formation of memories (). , p. 102; ; ). Even today, only about half of teachers and the general public, depending on the country, agree that "learning occurs through the modification of the brain's neural connections" (

If anyone should appreciate that teaching and learning are biological phenomena, one would predict it would be biologists, and scientists more generally. However, few of us were likely taught about the neurobiology of learning in our pedagogical training. In this paper, we will first explore how one might conceptualize learning as a biological process in the context of a common teaching technique called the think-pair-share. Then, we will give an overview of what is known from biological research about the neurobiological basis of learning and explore how various teaching techniques might harness known neurological mechanisms to promote the creation and retrieval of long-term memories. This Feature does not aspire to give instructions for how one should teach. Certainly, there have been many attempts to use the findings of neuroscience to create guidelines for instruction, particularly in K-12 education, and even to sell "brain-based curricula," but given the complexity of human learning, many neuroscientists believe these attempts have been at best premature and, at worst, "distortions" of the science ( Bruer, 2006 Goswami, 2006 2007 Howard-Jones, 2014 ). Instead, we aspire to connect what is known in neurobiology to what is known from science education research about how innovative teaching is effective at promoting learning (). ; ; James S. McDonnell Foundation, ;

A NEUROBIOLOGICAL CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE THINK-PAIR-SHARE

Each of our students arrives in class with a human brain, which on average has 86 billion neurons arranged in hundreds of brain regions, each with different functions (). These neurons connect with one another to form neural circuits, making an estimated 100 trillion contacts with one another, called synapses ( Williams and Herrup, 1988 ). Although there is much that we do not understand about how the brain functions, we do know that brains are always active, always analyzing and responding to a myriad of internal and external cues, both consciously and subconsciously. As an example, if we could look inside student brains as they are learning through participating in a common nonlecture classroom activity, the think-pair-share, what might we see?

Imagine a class full of students. In a think-pair-share, they all think individually about a solution to a problem, pair with a neighbor to discuss their ideas, and share their thoughts with a larger group ( Lyman, 1981 Tanner, 2009b ). Although this technique is relatively easy to implement, its apparent simplicity belies the deeper intricacies of the tasks the students' brains must do to accomplish it. During the think phase, to be most effective, the students' task must pique their interest and motivate them to pay attention to the concept under study. That attention might cause the release of chemicals in the brain, such as particular types of Everitt and Robbins, 1997 Schultz and Dickinson, 2000 Lupien and McEwen, 1997 ; ). ). The task may also tie the concept to other topics from the class or from real life, challenging the students and the brain cells within them to form the associations that can aid long-term memory formation and retrieval. In the next phases, the pair and the share, the students discuss the task with peers, practicing the skills and habits of thought necessary to master the subject. During this phase, the students have the confidence to complete this activity with a community of supportive peers. These feelings of confidence and community may also promote learning indirectly by preventing the release of chemicals in the brain and body, such as stress hormones, that could inhibit learning ( ; ; neurotransmitters, which carry signals between synapses, that promote learning (

Thus, all of the phases of the think-pair-share are in service to the ultimate goal, encoding memory in synaptic connections and neural circuits. Hopefully, the think-pair-share has caused the connections between nerve cells inside the students' brains to be changed for a long time, allowing them to recall the solution to the task months later and perhaps for the rest of their lives. So, how exactly do neurons and synapses change when a memory is created and retrieved? Below, we delve into the neurobiology of learning on a more detailed level to illuminate the changes that may be occurring in students' brains as they learn.

HOW DO TWO NEURONS COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER?

The consensus among neuroscientists is that the basis of learning and memory creation lies in changes in electrically active nerve cells, called neurons, and the connections between them, the synapses. Although neurons come in many diverse shapes, a stereotypical example of two neurons is shown in . Neurons have many thin projections extending from the cell body, called dendrites and axons (). In general, dendrites receive signals from the outside world or from other neurons, and axons send signals to other neurons or to muscles or glands. When a neuron's dendrites are adequately stimulated, an electrical signal flows down the dendrites, through the cell body, and down the axon (). Colloquially, this process is referred to as firing.

At the synapse, this electrical signal is passed onto other neurons. However, most of the time, the signal cannot be passed on directly, because the end of an axon is usually very close to part of another neuron's dendrite but is not directly continuous with it (). Therefore, to propagate the signal, the sending neuron, the presynaptic neuron, must convert the electrical signal to a chemical signal before it can be sent to the receiving neuron, the postsynaptic neuron. In other words, in response to electrical stimulation, presynaptic neurons release neurotransmitters that carry the cellular signal across the synaptic gap. There are dozens of different types of neurotransmitters, each with different possible effects, and the neurotransmitter(s) released at a particular synapse depends on the identity of the presynaptic neuron. After release, the neurotransmitters diffuse across the synapse and bind to receptors on (or in) the postsynaptic cell (). When a neurotransmitter binds to a receptor, it directly or indirectly creates or modulates an electrical signal in the postsynaptic neuron, perhaps causing it to fire. A postsynaptic neuron might have tens of thousands of presynaptic neurons of different types synapsing onto it (). This system of using chemical neurotransmitters to send signals across synapses to alter the postsynaptic neuron's behavior allows for the postsynaptic neuron to integrate all the signals it receives and produce sensible behavioral responses to complex environmental stimuli.

HOW DOES THE BRAIN CHANGE THROUGH SYNAPTIC PLASTICITY? NEURONS THAT FIRE TOGETHER, WIRE TOGETHER

While the basic architecture of the human brain is set up early in childhood, learning and memory is possible because individual neurons retain the ability to change their signaling and synaptic connections throughout a person's life. Brain changes have been observed in neurons and synapses both after extreme changes in sensory experiences, like blindness, and after more subtle ones, like navigating a maze for the first time ( Wiesel and Hubel, 1963 Karlsson and Frank, 2008 ). For the most part, brain changes do not seem to arise from the birth of new neurons, called ; neurogenesis. While neurogenesis does occur in the adult human brain, it only does so in certain brain areas, and newly born neurons represent only ∼0.004% of the of the total population of neurons at any given time (; ; ).

Instead, learning appears to occur primarily because of changes in the strength and number of the connections between existing neurons, a process called synaptic plasticity. For the most part, the changes occur in such a way that frequently used connections between neurons are enhanced the most. If the activation of a presynaptic neuron causes a postsynaptic neuron to fire, the neurons will alter themselves molecularly and cellularly so that the presynaptic neuron becomes even better at triggering the firing of the postsynaptic neuron ( Hebb, 1949 Holtmaat and Svoboda, 2009 Shatz, 1992 ). ; ). If the coactivation of two neurons happens repeatedly, these new synapses can last for long periods of time, providing a neural substrate for long-term memory. The principle that that coactivation of two neurons leads to a stronger connection between those neurons was pithily summarized in the early 1990s by neuroscientist Carla Shatz as, "Neurons that fire together, wire together" ( ; ). For example, in the short term, more neurotransmitter receptors may be inserted into the membrane of the synapse of the postsynaptic neuron, making it more receptive to the presynaptic neuron's signals, and in the long term, new synapses between the two neurons may grow (

HOW DOES SYNAPTIC PLASTICITY RELATE TO LEARNING AND MEMORY?

Researchers have repeatedly shown that neural connections in many different parts of the brain can change and that this synaptic plasticity is associated with and leads to behavioral learning and the formation of memories. For instance, neuroscientists found that training mice in a novel motor task induced an outgrowth of new synapses very quickly, within an hour, in the motor cortex, a part of the brain dedicated to planned movements. Furthermore, they found that further training stabilized some of the new synapses so that they remained present for weeks, months, and possibly years (; ). We also know that blocking specific processes and molecules important for synaptic plasticity, such as particular neurotransmitter receptors, prevents behavioral learning, giving a causal connection between synaptic plasticity and learning (). These are just some of the thousands of studies in all sorts of animal models that link synaptic plasticity between neurons to the changes in behavior that indicate learning and memory formation ().

WHAT CAN AFFECT THE ABILITY OF NEURAL CONNECTIONS TO CHANGE?

Although nearly all neural connections have the ability to exhibit plasticity, there are multiple factors that can either promote or inhibit neural change. Some of the same processes that alter one's ability to learn are also associated with neurochemicals that affect synaptic plasticity. For example, we all know that it is easier to learn something if we are paying attention and motivated by the material. Scientists have identified a set of neurotransmitters that are commonly released in contexts involving motivation and attention. Broadly speaking, the neurotransmitter dopamine is associated with reward or the anticipation of reward, while the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) is released during situations of novelty or surprise ( Everitt and Robbins, 1997 Schultz and Dickinson, 2000 ). Unsurprisingly, blocking either neurotransmitter impairs synaptic plasticity, while the presence of either neurotransmitter enhances it (; ; ; ). On the basis of these laboratory studies, neuroscientists would predict that when our students are motivated and attentive in our class, their brains are releasing dopamine and ACh, priming them for plasticity and learning. ;

On the flip side, there are other factors that can inhibit plasticity. Everyone has felt how a stressful or scary event causes heart rates and blood pressures to rise. It turns out that some of the same chemicals that are involved in the body's response to fear and stress also pass into the brain and can profoundly affect processes there. One chemical in particular, the stress hormone cortisol, seems to be particularly relevant to plasticity and learning. The brain is rich in receptors for cortisol, especially in areas relevant to memory (). While mild elevations in cortisol can boost performance on memory tests, high levels inhibit both the encoding and the retrieval of memory in both animals and humans ( Lupien and McEwen, 1997 Conrad, 2010 ). Fortunately, those same studies have shown that this shrinkage is reversible. On the basis of these studies, neuroscientists would likely predict that high levels of stress in students in classrooms would be an impediment to learning, and removing some stressors could facilitate it. ; ). Synaptic plasticity follows the same pattern, wherein high levels of cortisol disrupt the strengthening of connections between synapses (). The negative effects of high levels of stress and cortisol on memory compound over time. Many different studies using all sorts of stressors have found that chronic stress can impair learning and memory and is even associated with the shrinkage of certain brain structures in humans (

HOW ARE MEMORIES STORED AND RETRIEVED?

For learning to be useful and affect behavior, once the learning is complete and synaptic connections are strengthened, memories must be stored and then retrieved when needed. While much is still to be discovered, neuroscientists propose that memories are stored in groups of neurons that all become strongly connected to each other during learning and synaptic plasticity. Just as learning to perform a certain protocol in a biology lab course, for example, might tie together many different types of information, such as remembering the quantities of chemicals used, the motions for combining them, and the look of the product once the protocol is completed, the neuronal memory ensemble may include neurons that are physically located in many different places in the brain that nevertheless are synaptically connected and that increase the strength of their connections to each other during learning (). Memories are retrieved through reactivation of the neurons whose synapses were altered in the initial creation of a memory, particularly in the time shortly after that memory was created (; ; Goshen, 2014 ). In fact, recent technological advances have allowed us to reactivate certain memories and induce particular learned behaviors on demand in mice through artificial stimulation of the specific neurons that were active during the formation of those memories ().

However, just because the neurons involved are scattered throughout the brain does not mean that synapses are altered at random whenever something new is learned. On the contrary, the plasticity that occurs after learning is specific to the particular neurons that will go on to form the memory ensemble. Scientists have found that of the tens of thousands of synapses a postsynaptic neuron may have, for the most part, only the synapses connected to a particular presynaptic neuron will be strengthened when it is fired strongly by that presynaptic neuron (). The specificity of synaptic plasticity may mean that learning one fact or skill may not easily or immediately translate into learning another fact or skill, even if the two facts or skills seem closely related.

In summary, then, the brain creates memories through altering the synaptic connections between specific neurons, stores them in connected ensembles of neurons, and retrieves them by reactivating those same neurons and connections. Importantly, the ability of the synapses to respond to learning experiences by undergoing synaptic plasticity is modulated by the presence of other chemical factors, such as dopamine, ACh, and cortisol, which are associated with particular emotional, environmental, and cognitive states. Some of these chemicals, such as the neurotransmitters dopamine and ACh, are associated with attention and motivation, positively influence synaptic plasticity and learning, while other compounds associated with stress, like the hormone cortisol, negatively influence synaptic plasticity and learning. So, how can we use this information about how the brain creates and retrieves memories to understand how various teaching techniques may affect our students' brains?

HOW COMMON TEACHING TECHNIQUES MAY AFFECT THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF LEARNERS' BRAINS

We will discuss here several different techniques that fall under the umbrella of "scientific teaching" and how they may affect the neurobiology of learning. We will do this by introducing four different hypothetical students-Alessa, Joe, Morgan, and Elijah-and their experiences in a traditionally taught first-year introductory biology class that lacks these techniques. The four techniques that we will focus on are frequent homework, concept maps, problem-based learning, and culturally diverse examples, although we will also briefly discuss other techniques that may take advantage of similar neural processes as these four (). For each technique, we will first present the student's experience in context, then show evidence from science education and psychology research for why the technique might address the student's difficulties, and finally discuss the likely neurobiological basis for why the technique may be effective.

TABLE 1.

Neuroscientific principle discussed in this Feature

Psychological or educational findings or ideas that may correspond to the neuroscientific principle

Teaching techniques that may harness the corresponding principlea

Synaptic plasticity is specific to the particular neurons that are active together.

Active forms of studying improve test performance over passive forms.
Frequent, active homework

Memories are encoded as synaptic networks.

Encoding knowledge relationally helps in remembering it.
Concept maps

Dopamine and ACh, released during states of motivation and attention, boost synaptic plasticity.

Motivation and attention increase learning.
Problem-based learning

Cortisol, released during stress, depresses synaptic plasticity.

Stereotype threat undermines learning and performance.
Using culturally diverse examples

NEUROBIOLOGICAL REANALYSIS OF THE THINK-PAIR-SHARE

Now knowing some ways that active learning can affect the brain, let us reanalyze the "simple" think-pair-share and see how the neural processes outlined earlier can come together to promote learning. In a think-pair-share, the questions posed to the students are usually interesting and motivating to provide a rich basis for thought and discussion. By gaining the students' interest and attention, we may be promoting release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and ACh that enhance neural plasticity. Such questions may also prompt students to connect the material under study to previously learned information or real-world issues, possibly encouraging the formation of neural networks that can promote retrieval of the material in the future. In addition, as students are writing about and discussing the questions with their peers, they are practicing the problem-solving and thinking skills necessary for gaining expertise in a subject. In other words, they may be engaging not only the parts of their brain responsible for reciting semantic information but also those important in developing skills and habits. Finally, it is important to note what is not going on during a think-pair-share. Think-pair-shares are low-stakes and involve the participation of the entire class. The friendly and communal atmosphere that regular think-pair-shares promote may increase belonging and decrease stress, potentially reducing the amount of cortisol released in student brains and removing a factor that can impede neural plasticity and learning.

WHAT MIGHT TEACHING AND LEARNING LOOK LIKE AS NEUROSCIENCE ADVANCES?

Teaching and learning are fundamentally neurobiological phenomena. However, while neurobiologists have figured out the basics behind how the brain creates and stores memories, there is still much more to discover. For example, there is currently very little neurobiology research that might explain how concepts as important to learning as metacognition and knowledge organization might be expressed in the brain. Future advances in neuroscience will almost certainly allow us to more easily investigate how complex phenomena like these are represented in the brain and how they affect synaptic plasticity. In addition, currently, a significant portion of our knowledge linking learning to cellular and molecular changes in the brain is indirect, deriving from animal studies or studies conducted in the confinement of a magnetic resonance imaging scanner. In the future, we may be able to look into the human brain in real time and get more direct information about how synapses and circuits change in students as they learn.

Because teaching and learning arise from properties of the human brain, the ability of a teaching technique to harness the processes in a student's brain that support the formation and retrieval of long-term memories will help determine that technique's effectiveness in promoting that student's learning. As we learn more about the brain, we will increasingly be able to use the results of neurobiological studies to more effectively select and develop new pedagogical techniques. Translating the results of neuroscience to the classroom will help future instructors truly teach their students from the inside out.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Robin Wright for her early inspiration and conversations about this Feature. We also thank Natalia Caporale, Sara Brownell, Colin Harrison, Sarah Bissonnette, Kristin de Nesnera, Rhea Kimpo, and Henry Mahncke for helpful ideas and discussion.

REFERENCES

Hartley D. Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations. vol. 2. Bath and London: Samuel Richardson; 1749. [Google Scholar]

Hebb DO. The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory. New York: Wiley; 1949. [Google Scholar]

Howard-Jones PA, Franey L, Mashmoushi R, Liao Y-C. The neuroscience literacy of trainee teachers. 2009. British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, held September 2-5, 2009, in Manchester, England.

James S. McDonnell Foundation. The Santiago Declaration. 2007. www.jsmf.org/santiagodeclaration/ (accessed 24 September 2015)

Lyman F. The responsive classroom discussion: the inclusion of all students. In: Anderson A, editor. In: Mainstreaming Digest. College Park: University of Maryland; 1981. pp. 109-113. [Google Scholar]

Morris RG, Anderson E, Lynch GS, Baudry M. Selective impairment of learning and blockade of long-term potentiation by an N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor antagonist, AP5. Nature. 1986;319:774-776. [[PubMed] Google Scholar]

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Teaching as Brain Changing: Exploring Connections between Neuroscience and Innovative Teaching

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One would hope that of the many ways to conceptualize teaching and learning, scientists would view these processes as driving biological changes in the brain. Here, the authors draw connections between innovative teaching techniques and neuroscience that may support our understanding of why innovative teaching is so effective at promoting learning.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b8ZkhPoH_M&ab_channel=CECEEarlyChildhoodVideosatEasternCTStateU.

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CECE Early Childhood Videos at Eastern CT State U.

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Grocery Store to Craft Market - Building Background Knowledge Through Dramatic Play

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Aouad, J. and Savage, R. (2009). The component structure of preliteracy skills: Further evidence for the simple view of reading. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 24 (2), 183-200.

Catts, H., Adlof, S., and Weismer, S. (2006). Language deficits in poor comprehenders: A case for the simple view of reading. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 278-293.

Gough, P., Hoover, W., and Patterson, C. (1996). Some observations on a simple view of reading. In C. Cornoldi and J. Oakhill (eds.), Reading comprehension difficulties: Processes and intervention (pp. 1-13). Mahway, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

*Gough, P. and Tunmer, W. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Hoover, W. and Gough, P. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2, 127-160.

*Kamhi, A. (2007). Knowledge deficits: the true crisis in education. ASHA Leader, 12 (7), 28-29.

*These articles are short and easy to read.

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The Simple View of Reading is a formula demonstrating the widely accepted view that reading has two basic components: word recognition (decoding) and language comprehension. Research studies show that a student's reading comprehension score can be predicted if decoding skills and language comprehension abilities are known.

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Interest Surveys: What, Why, and How from CLI

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Gives guidance what to include in an interest survey

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Example of interest survey for Open House

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This survey covers just about everything you might want/need to know about incoming students! Topics include:
Name
Nickname
Child's strengths (parent and child perspective)
School accomplishments
Accomplishments outside of school
Child's personality
Fav. subject
Least fav. subject
Reading time at home
Homework habits
Parents homework thoughts/feelings
Child's interests/likes
Screen time
Time spent at public library
Parents most academic/behavior/social concerns
Multiple Intelligences: What type is your child?
Child's home interests/activities
Parents social/academic goals for child
Sibling information
Prior school/teacher
Living arrangements/people in the home(s)
Parent short answer note to teacher

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This survey covers just about everything you might want/need to know about incoming students! Topics include: Name Nickname Child's strengths (parent and child perspective) School accomplishments Accomplishments outside of school Child's personality Fav. subject Least fav.

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Get to Know You Games to Start the School Year

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Get to Know You Games to Start the School Year

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Examples of activities to facilitate oral language and develop a classroom community

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Set a friendly tone in your classroom with these 30 "Get to Know You" games perfect for back to school or when welcoming a new student.

Welcome back to school! Your primary students are so excited to get to know you because you take the time to get to know them. You know their likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, good days and bad, and you withhold any negative judgment from their precious minds so that they will continue to love learning just as much as they love you.

It all starts with how you set the tone that very first day, with your welcoming smile, your enthusiastic vibe, and your ability to set high expectations in a safe space.

Get To Know You Games

How do you get to know them? Here are 30 get to know you games for the classroom that will help you learn more about your students, and they learn about each other!

"Gallery Walks"

The main idea surrounding gallery walks is that you hang up pictures (a la an art gallery), and kids walk around, looking and talking about what they see and what they like. In getting to know them, you can have them walk around to see their choices. Then when you call time, they have to go to their favorite. Conversations will occur while students are walking, then when they choose, and you have them explain why. They could find a kindred spirit in their love of dragons or of Mo Willems' Pigeon.

There are many ways you can put these to use in your classroom:

Book covers - Share covers of popular titles like Curious George, Elephant and Piggy, Clifford, and more.

Actual art - Introduce your students to the masterpieces of Dali, Monet, and Picasso.

Animals - Share photos and pictures from the mythical creatures to elephants or even puppy dogs!

Quotes - Choose easy to read quotes from books and inspirational figures that relate to your students.

"Get to Know You" Bingo

Bingo is a popular get to know you game, but there are many variations. Fill the card with items and words, then have your students walk around finding a classmate to sign a square. It makes the perfect "Get to Know You" game! Once again, you could use this in many ways:

Pre-fill the card with every student's name - Students need to find their classmate with that name.

Images of household pets, colors, local attractions, clipart of family members - The goal would be to find students with that household pet, who likes that color, has been to that attraction, has a sister, etc.

Use words instead of images, and follow the rules from above.

Distribute blank Bingo cards - Provide guiding questions to your students, and have them fill in the squares then find someone with the same interest. Because of the increased difficulty, maybe create your card with fewer rows.

Get to Know You Games for Introductions

These get to know you games have one common denominator - they ask students to state their name and answer a question.

Hot Potato - Have an object that you pass around, and when the timer goes off, the student with the potato speaks.

Musical Chairs - Place chairs in a circle facing outward (but make sure there is one less chair than students), play music, and when you stop, the student without a chair speaks.

Move If - There are many names and variations of this game. Once again, have chairs in a circle - enough so that all students but one get one. Have the chairs facing inward with one student in the middle. The student says something like "I have a dog," and all students with a dog have to get up and move to another chair, leaving another student in the middle, who may have a hamster, and the movement continues.

Don't Get Stuck - Set up chairs similarly to "Move If," but give the student in the center a ball. The student calls out another student's name and puts the ball on the ground. All students have to move to a new seat (make the rule that it can't be right next to them). The elected student has to go and grab the ball. If everyone is, then they are "stuck" in the middle and have to call a new name. If not, the person can call out a new name of someone not in a chair. The round is over when everyone is seated except for the "stuck" student.

Art Integrations

Many of the easiest and most engaging forms of get to know you games involve art! Check these out.

Spiderweb - Bring in a skein of yarn and have your students sit in a circle. The person who begins has to say something about him or herself. If another student has the same in common, the skein of yarn is rolled/tossed to that student, who then says something new. C until every student is holding some of the yarn, symbolizing that the class may be full of differences, but they all have a common thread to unite them.

Paper Dolls - Cut out paper dolls of similar sizes, anything from life-sized to 6 inches tall. Each student will color their doll. You can have them be life-like drawings, or you can have them attach symbols of what they like. Then take the finished dolls and hang them up attached at the hands to represent that they are unique but united.

Museum Exhibit - Gather a slew of magazines and cut-outs. Provide these to your class and give each student a poster board or a bigger sheet of paper. Students are to create an exhibit from these items expressing their likes and dislikes and more information about them.

Get to Know You Lunch - Provide each student with a lunch-sized brown bag. The student takes it home and returns the next day with items that represent them. You may want to include rules such as how they shouldn't bring in any living things or food that can spoil. I say this from experience!

Movement Activities

Questioning Beach Ball - There are two ways to do this. First, though, you need to get a beach ball. Write questions on the beach ball. Toss the beach ball, and students have to answer the question their right-hand touches. Ask one guiding question that all students respond to when they catch the ball.

Four Corners - Have questions with four potential answers, such as red, orange, purple, or pink as a favorite color. Students have to move to the corner that has their favorite color. If they have a different favorite color, then they either have to choose their favorite of the four mentioned or wait in the middle and say what it is.

This or That - This is very similar to Four Corners, except there are two options. For example, go to one side of the room if you like cats, the other if you like dogs.

Partner Cards - Create a set of cards so that each student gets one card; however, this set is different. Each card has a partner. For instance, one card would be a picture of peanut butter, and the other would be a picture of jelly. Different sets could be a washer and a dryer, toothbrush and toothpaste, rain and lightning, and so forth. Students walk around the room looking for their partner, talking about their pictures and themselves the whole time.

Scavenger Hunt - Create a scavenger hunt with the main parts of your room from different learning stations, to the calendar, to the art supplies, etc. Have something at each station, such as stickers or stamps, that they put on their card to mark things found.

Card Tower of Commonalities - Divide students into small groups and give them a set of index cards. The end goal is to build the tallest card tower. The catch? Before they can use a card, they need to find something in common and write it on the card.

Jenga - You can buy small sets of this game at most dollar stores. If they are out of stock, I've read that you can take sponges and create a cheaper version. Kids play the game as instructed. However, each block has a question on it OR a number to correspond with a question. Post questions on the board or a sheet.

Question Activities

The Nutty Name Game - State your name with an adjective or another word that starts with the same letter. Go around the room repeating each name and their word.

Interview and Report - Have a set of questions to have your students ask one another, then have the students report what they learned. Variations: Have kids create the questions to ask.

Why/Why/Why - For each answer, the student has to ask "why" at least once and up to three times. This way, we get beyond the fact that Jane likes cats, but we now know that she loves them because her neighbor had kittens who were soft and sweet, and she got to play with them regularly.

Wordsearch - Create a word search with all of your students' names on it and have it waiting at each desk. As they enter, they can begin working on it. Eventually, they won't be able to resist helping one another find words, exclaiming who they are and whatnot. Great time-filler for that first day as you are waiting for everyone to appear!

Luck of the Draw

M&Ms or Skittles - Have students grab a handful of this yummy candy. Assign each color a category such as favorite animal, family information, etc. For each piece of candy, a student has to share information from that category.

Toilet Paper - Students take as many squares of toilet paper as they want. You can tell them to grab a few or say to grab enough for them to survive a hike where they'll go potty. For each square grabbed, the student has to share something.

Dice - Create six guided questions that correspond with the numbers 1-6, or 2-12 if you want to use two die. Have students roll the die and answer the question associated with each number. It can be done as a class or in smaller groups with a shout-out of what was learned in the end.

There are so many fun ways to get to know your students this year! Try these 30 get to know you games for the classroom at the start of the year or as icebreakers throughout the year.

Back to School Community Building Resource

Help kids get to know each other and build important social and emotional skills with the back to school social emotional learning resource, the perfect companion to your start of school lesson plans. It includes mini-lesson ideas and engaging activities that build connections in the classroom and teach important social and emotional skills to children during the most important time of year!

The mind+heart SEL back to school resource and activities will support kids as they learn to be positive members of the classroom community, develop self-awareness, build new relationships, and act with kindness and empathy. Click HERE to check it out!

More Ideas for Back to School
Back to School Activities Back to School Ideas First Week of School Activities Relationships with Students
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30 Get To Know You Games to Start the School Year

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Set a friendly tone in your classroom with these 30 "Get to Know You" games perfect for back to school or when welcoming a new student. Welcome back to school! Your primary students are so excited to get to know you because you take the time to get to know them.

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Thematic Units - A Highly Effective Way to Engage Learners

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Thematic Units - A Highly Effective Way to Engage Learners

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Gives guidance on how to build thematic units

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Thematic Units - A Highly Effective Way to Engage Learners | Education World

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Thematic units allow children to better understand and retain the learning concepts. They turn lessons and learning into an exciting adventure!

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Project-Based Learning: The Perfect Fit for Early Childhood Education

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Project-Based Learning: The Perfect Fit for Early Childhood Education

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Guidance for how to implement PBL in ECE

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Early childhood education experts often deal with the misperception that younger learners face barriers to deeper learning or high-skilled activities. According to Wendy Ruiz, director of iLEAD's Early Childhood Education Programs, the truth is quite the opposite. Ruiz believes that the youngest learners deserve the rigorous, engaging and meaningful learning opportunities that project-based learning affords older learners.

Why PBL and Early Childhood Education

Ruiz believes, and can demonstrate, that PBL supports early literacy and more academic and social-emotional skills. Ruiz said young learners build language and literacy skills when they talk about project ideas and do introductory research alongside their facilitators. According to Ruiz, they develop cognitively while observing cause and effect, trial and error and problem-solving through project-based learning. She said they also learn creative skills as they expand their ideas and look outside the box, while also developing social-emotionally through collaborative work and implementation.

"PBL is important for preschoolers ages two to four, as it helps them to see how their ideas and questions can turn into extended learning experiences," Ruiz said.

Unique to Early Childhood Education and PBL

PBL for preschoolers is different, as their attention span is much shorter. Therefore, Ruiz said projects are implemented and completed over a shorter span of time. She added that projects are typically completed in teams and that presentations of learning are not emphasized as much.

"PBL for this age is also based on the learners' interests at the time vs. meeting specific standards," Ruiz said.

An example of PBL for preschoolers, according to Ruiz, could be discussing snowmen and then asking a guiding question, such as "How do we make a snowman?: Ruiz said that the facilitators might read children's books, sing songs, and then introduce a few trial-and-error activities with the learners. They may ask for predictions, such as "How many snowballs does it take before the snowman falls over?" Or "How cold does it need to be before the snowman melts?"

Types of Projects for Preschoolers

Ruiz said that projects tend to be shorter, simpler varieties based on learners' interests and then can be completed in two to three steps. For example, Ruiz cites a good example of this, in which learners talked about Starbucks and how to make their drinks. They were having fun and wanted to create their own version of a Starbucks drive-through using their indoor and outdoor play areas. Ruiz said that parents donated supplies and learners tackled questions about costs, amount of supplies needed and more.

"This was a great example of a small project where learners were using language, math and social-emotional skills," Ruiz said.

An example of a more in-depth project for preschoolers was one that Ruiz said her own three-year-old experienced. Learners were throwing away napkins in a trash can, and then one made a basket with a napkin. This led to a discussion about how to play basketball, and the learners formed basketball teams for a four-week experience. Ruiz said the learners, in addition to forming a team, created a team name and logo and even wrote letters to the Los Angeles Lakers asking for donations and athletic gear.

"Again, there were very high levels of learner voice, creativity and inquiry, while they also worked on language and math skills at the same time," Ruiz said.

Challenges, Advantages

Ruiz admits there are some challenges. She said some parents and families may need additional explanations and understanding of PBL benefits. However, she said common challenges relate to having proper materials on hand, as well as keeping the activities learner-led and allowing young learners to problem-solve for themselves.

"When parents understand it, they love it," Ruiz said.

Ruiz said there are more advantages than challenges for PBL in early childhood education. PBL is designed with the framework of play, according to Ruiz. "Preschoolers are natural play specialists," she said. "It's their life work, really."

Ruiz added that at Little iLEADers, facilitators offer loose parts and open-ended learning experiences, which naturally lend themselves to discussions, inquiry and extended learning - all great ways to facilitate PBL.

Going Forward

Ultimately, Ruiz advocates for PBL in early childhood learning experiences because she says it builds the foundation for deeper learning throughout the child's life.

"It builds the foundation of lifelong skills, problem-solving, thinking outside the box and the social skills of real collaboration," Ruiz said.

Her advice for facilitators, parents and families is to focus on the foundation of play-based learning.

"This will help learners to build trust in their own ideas and not be afraid to make mistakes," she said.

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Project-Based Learning: The Perfect Fit for Early Childhood Education - Being Makers

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Early childhood education experts often deal with the misperception that younger learners face barriers to deeper learning or high-skilled activities. According to Wendy Ruiz, director of iLEAD's Early Childhood Education Programs, the truth is quite the opposite. Ruiz believes that the youngest learners deserve the rigorous, engaging and meaningful learning opportunities that project-based learning affords older learners.

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5 Ways to Begin the Shift Towards Project-Based Learning

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5 Ways to Begin the Shift Towards Project-Based Learning

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Guidance for how to shift to PBL

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5 Ways to Begin the Shift Towards Project-Based Learning

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Research that supports the academic value of field trips

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Crystal Bridges; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; School Tour © 2013 Stephen Ironside/Ironside Photography
Bo Bartlett - "The Box" - 2002 * Oil on Linen * 82 x 100 - Photographer is Karen Mauch

The school field trip has a long history in American public education. For decades, students have piled into yellow buses to visit a variety of cultural institutions, including art, natural history, and science museums, as well as theaters, zoos, and historical sites. Schools gladly endured the expense and disruption of providing field trips because they saw these experiences as central to their educational mission: schools exist not only to provide economically useful skills in numeracy and literacy, but also to produce civilized young men and women who would appreciate the arts and culture. More-advantaged families may take their children to these cultural institutions outside of school hours, but less-advantaged students are less likely to have these experiences if schools do not provide them. With field trips, public schools viewed themselves as the great equalizer in terms of access to our cultural heritage.

Today, culturally enriching field trips are in decline. Museums across the country report a steep drop in school tours. For example, the Field Museum in Chicago at one time welcomed more than 300,000 students every year. Recently the number is below 200,000. Between 2002 and 2007, Cincinnati arts organizations saw a 30 percent decrease in student attendance. A survey by the American Association of School Administrators found that more than half of schools eliminated planned field trips in 2010-11.

The decision to reduce culturally enriching field trips reflects a variety of factors. Financial pressures force schools to make difficult decisions about how to allocate scarce resources, and field trips are increasingly seen as an unnecessary frill. Greater focus on raising student performance on math and reading standardized tests may also lead schools to cut field trips. Some schools believe that student time would be better spent in the classroom preparing for the exams. When schools do organize field trips, they are increasingly choosing to take students on trips to reward them for working hard to improve their test scores rather than to provide cultural enrichment. Schools take students to amusement parks, sporting events, and movie theaters instead of to museums and historical sites. This shift from "enrichment" to "reward" field trips is reflected in a generational change among teachers about the purposes of these outings. In a 2012‒13 survey we conducted of nearly 500 Arkansas teachers, those who had been teaching for at least 15 years were significantly more likely to believe that the primary purpose of a field trip is to provide a learning opportunity, while more junior teachers were more likely to see the primary purpose as "enjoyment."

If schools are de-emphasizing culturally enriching field trips, has anything been lost as a result? Surprisingly, we have relatively little rigorous evidence about how field trips affect students. The research presented here is the first large-scale randomized-control trial designed to measure what students learn from school tours of an art museum.

We find that students learn quite a lot. In particular, enriching field trips contribute to the development of students into civilized young men and women who possess more knowledge about art, have stronger critical-thinking skills, exhibit increased historical empathy, display higher levels of tolerance, and have a greater taste for consuming art and culture.
Design of the Study and School Tours
The 2011 opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Northwest Arkansas created the opportunity for this study. Crystal Bridges is the first major art museum to be built in the United States in the last four decades, with more than 50,000 square feet of gallery space and an endowment in excess of $800 million. Portions of the museum's endowment are devoted to covering all of the expenses associated with school tours. Crystal Bridges reimburses schools for the cost of buses, provides free admission and lunch, and even pays for the cost of substitute teachers to cover for teachers who accompany students on the tour.

Because the tour is completely free to schools, and because Crystal Bridges was built in an area that never previously had an art museum, there was high demand for school tours. Not all school groups could be accommodated right away. So our research team worked with the staff at Crystal Bridges to assign spots for school tours by lottery. During the first two semesters of the school tour program, the museum received 525 applications from school groups representing 38,347 students in kindergarten through grade 12. We created matched pairs among the applicant groups based on similarity in grade level and other demographic factors. An ideal and common matched pair would be adjacent grades in the same school. We then randomly ordered the matched pairs to determine scheduling prioritization. Within each pair, we randomly assigned which applicant would be in the treatment group and receive a tour that semester and which would be in the control group and have its tour deferred.

We administered surveys to 10,912 students and 489 teachers at 123 different schools three weeks, on average, after the treatment group received its tour. The student surveys included multiple items assessing knowledge about art as well as measures of critical thinking, historical empathy, tolerance, and sustained interest in visiting art museums. Some groups were surveyed as late as eight weeks after the tour, but it was not possible to collect data after longer periods because each control group was guaranteed a tour during the following semester as a reward for its cooperation. There is no indication that the results reported below faded for groups surveyed after longer periods.

We also assessed students' critical-thinking skills by asking them to write a short essay in response to a painting that they had not previously seen. Finally, we collected a behavioral measure of interest in art consumption by providing all students with a coded coupon good for free family admission to a special exhibit at the museum to see whether the field trip increased the likelihood of students making future visits.

All results reported below are derived from regression models that control for student grade level and gender and make comparisons within each matched pair, while taking into account the fact that students in the matched pair of applicant groups are likely to be similar in ways that we are unable to observe. Standard validity tests confirmed that the survey items employed to generate the various scales used as outcomes measured the same underlying constructs.

The intervention we studied is a modest one. Students received a one-hour tour of the museum in which they typically viewed and discussed five paintings. Some students were free to roam the museum following their formal tour, but the entire experience usually involved less than half a day. Instructional materials were sent to teachers who went on a tour, but our survey of teachers suggests that these materials received relatively little attention, on average no more than an hour of total class time. The discussion of each painting during the tour was largely student-directed, with the museum educators facilitating the discourse and providing commentary beyond the names of the work and the artist and a brief description only when students requested it. This format is now the norm in school tours of art museums. The aversion to having museum educators provide information about works of art is motivated in part by progressive education theories and by a conviction among many in museum education that students retain very little factual information from their tours.
Results
Recalling Tour Details. Our research suggests that students actually retain a great deal of factual information from their tours. Students who received a tour of the museum were able to recall details about the paintings they had seen at very high rates. For example, 88 percent of the students who saw the Eastman Johnson painting At the Camp-Spinning Yarns and Whittling knew when surveyed weeks later that the painting depicts abolitionists making maple syrup to undermine the sugar industry, which relied on slave labor. Similarly, 82 percent of those who saw Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter could recall that the painting emphasizes the importance of women entering the workforce during World War II. Among students who saw Thomas Hart Benton's Ploughing It Under, 79 percent recollected that it is a depiction of a farmer destroying his crops as part of a Depression-era price support program. And 70 percent of the students who saw Romare Bearden's Sacrifice could remember that it is part of the Harlem Renaissance art movement. Since there was no guarantee that these facts would be raised in student-directed discussions, and because students had no particular reason for remembering these details (there was no test or grade associated with the tours), it is impressive that they could recall historical and sociological information at such high rates.

These results suggest that art could be an important tool for effectively conveying traditional academic content, but this analysis cannot prove it. The control-group performance was hardly better than chance in identifying factual information about these paintings, but they never had the opportunity to learn the material. The high rate of recall of factual information by students who toured the museum demonstrates that the tours made an impression. The students could remember important details about what they saw and discussed.

Critical Thinking. Beyond recalling the details of their tour, did a visit to an art museum have a significant effect on students? Our study demonstrates that it did. For example, students randomly assigned to receive a school tour of Crystal Bridges later displayed demonstrably stronger ability to think critically about art than the control group.

During the first semester of the study, we showed all 3rd- through 12th-grade students a painting they had not previously seen, Bo Bartlett's The Box. We then asked students to write short essays in response to two questions: What do you think is going on in this painting? And, what do you see that makes you think that? These are standard prompts used by museum educators to spark discussion during school tours.

We stripped the essays of all identifying information and had two coders rate the compositions using a seven-item rubric for measuring critical thinking that was developed by researchers at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The measure is based on the number of instances that students engaged in the following in their essays: observing, interpreting, evaluating, associating, problem finding, comparing, and flexible thinking. Our measure of critical thinking is the sum of the counts of these seven items. In total, our research team blindly scored 3,811 essays. For 750 of those essays, two researchers scored them independently. The scores they assigned to the same essay were very similar, demonstrating that we were able to measure critical thinking about art with a high degree of inter-coder reliability.

We express the impact of a school tour of Crystal Bridges on critical-thinking skills in terms of standard-deviation effect sizes. Overall, we find that students assigned by lottery to a tour of the museum improve their ability to think critically about art by 9 percent of a standard deviation relative to the control group. The benefit for disadvantaged groups is considerably larger (see Figure 1). Rural students, who live in towns with fewer than 10,000 people, experience an increase in critical-thinking skills of nearly one-third of a standard deviation. Students from high-poverty schools (those where more than 50 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunches) experience an 18 percent effect-size improvement in critical thinking about art, as do minority students.

A large amount of the gain in critical-thinking skills stems from an increase in the number of observations that students made in their essays. Students who went on a tour became more observant, noticing and describing more details in an image. Being observant and paying attention to detail is an important and highly useful skill that students learn when they study and discuss works of art. Additional research is required to determine if the gains in critical thinking when analyzing a work of art would transfer into improved critical thinking about other, non-art-related subjects.

Historical Empathy. Tours of art museums also affect students' values. Visiting an art museum exposes students to a diversity of ideas, peoples, places, and time periods. That broadening experience imparts greater appreciation and understanding. We see the effects in significantly higher historical empathy and tolerance measures among students randomly assigned to a school tour of Crystal Bridges.

Historical empathy is the ability to understand and appreciate what life was like for people who lived in a different time and place. This is a central purpose of teaching history, as it provides students with a clearer perspective about their own time and place. To measure historical empathy, we included three statements on the survey with which students could express their level of agreement or disagreement: 1) I have a good understanding of how early Americans thought and felt; 2) I can imagine what life was like for people 100 years ago; and 3) When looking at a painting that shows people, I try to imagine what those people are thinking. We combined these items into a scale measuring historical empathy.

Students who went on a tour of Crystal Bridges experience a 6 percent of a standard deviation increase in historical empathy. Among rural students, the benefit is much larger, a 15 percent of a standard deviation gain. We can illustrate this benefit by focusing on one of the items in the historical empathy scale. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement, "I have a good understanding of how early Americans thought and felt," 70 percent of the treatment-group students express agreement compared to 66 percent of the control group. Among rural participants, 69 percent of the treatment-group students agree with this statement compared to 62 percent of the control group. The fact that Crystal Bridges features art from different periods in American history may have helped produce these gains in historical empathy.

Tolerance. To measure tolerance we included four statements on the survey to which students could express their level of agreement or disagreement: 1) People who disagree with my point of view bother me; 2) Artists whose work is critical of America should not be allowed to have their work shown in art museums; 3) I appreciate hearing views different from my own; and 4) I think people can have different opinions about the same thing. We combined these items into a scale measuring the general effect of the tour on tolerance.

Overall, receiving a school tour of an art museum increases student tolerance by 7 percent of a standard deviation. As with critical thinking, the benefits are much larger for students in disadvantaged groups. Rural students who visited Crystal Bridges experience a 13 percent of a standard deviation improvement in tolerance. For students at high-poverty schools, the benefit is 9 percent of a standard deviation.

The improvement in tolerance for students who went on a tour of Crystal Bridges can be illustrated by the responses to one of the items within the tolerance scale. When asked about the statement, "Artists whose work is critical of America should not be allowed to have their work shown in art museums," 35 percent of the control-group students express agreement. But for students randomly assigned to receive a school tour of the art museum, only 32 percent agree with censoring art critical of America. Among rural students, 34 percent of the control group would censor art compared to 30 percent for the treatment group. In high-poverty schools, 37 percent of the control-group students would censor compared to 32 percent of the treatment-group students. These differences are not huge, but neither is the intervention. These changes represent the realistic improvement in tolerance that results from a half-day experience at an art museum.

Interest in Art Museums. Perhaps the most important outcome of a school tour is whether it cultivates an interest among students in returning to cultural institutions in the future. If visiting a museum helps improve critical thinking, historical empathy, tolerance, and other outcomes not measured in this study, then those benefits would compound for students if they were more likely to frequent similar cultural institutions throughout their life. The direct effects of a single visit are necessarily modest and may not persist, but if school tours help students become regular museum visitors, they may enjoy a lifetime of enhanced critical thinking, tolerance, and historical empathy.

We measured how school tours of Crystal Bridges develop in students an interest in visiting art museums in two ways: with survey items and a behavioral measure. We included a series of items in the survey designed to gauge student interest:

* I plan to visit art museums when I am an adult.

* I would tell my friends they should visit an art museum.

* Trips to art museums are interesting.

* Trips to art museums are fun.

* Would your friend like to go to an art museum on a field trip?

* Would you like more museums in your community?

* How interested are you in visiting art museums?

* If your friends or family wanted to go to an art museum, how interested would you be in going?

Interest in visiting art museums among students who toured the museum is 8 percent of a standard deviation higher than that in the randomized control group. Among rural students, the increase is much larger: 22 percent of a standard deviation. Students at high-poverty schools score 11 percent of a standard deviation higher on the cultural consumer scale if they were randomly assigned to tour the museum. And minority students gain 10 percent of a standard deviation in their desire to be art consumers.

One of the eight items in the art consumer scale asked students to express the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the statement, "I would tell my friends they should visit an art museum." For all students who received a tour, 70 percent agree with this statement, compared to 66 percent in the control group. Among rural participants, 73 percent of the treatment-group students agree versus 63 percent of the control group. In high-poverty schools, 74 percent would recommend art museums to their friends compared to 68 percent of the control group. And among minority students, 72 percent of those who received a tour would tell their friends to visit an art museum, relative to 67 percent of the control group. Students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are more likely to have positive feelings about visiting museums if they receive a school tour.

We also measured whether students are more likely to visit Crystal Bridges in the future if they received a school tour. All students who participated in the study during the first semester, including those who did not receive a tour, were provided with a coupon that gave them and their families free entry to a special exhibit at Crystal Bridges. The coupons were coded so that we could determine the applicant group to which students belonged. Students had as long as six months after receipt of the coupon to use it.

We collected all redeemed coupons and were able to calculate how many adults and youths were admitted. Though students in the treatment group received 49 percent of all coupons that were distributed, 58 percent of the people admitted to the special exhibit with those coupons came from the treatment group. In other words, the families of students who received a tour were 18 percent more likely to return to the museum than we would expect if their rate of coupon use was the same as their share of distributed coupons.

This is particularly impressive given that the treatment-group students had recently visited the museum. Their desire to visit a museum might have been satiated, while the control group might have been curious to visit Crystal Bridges for the first time. Despite having recently been to the museum, students who received a school tour came back at higher rates. Receiving a school tour cultivates a taste for visiting art museums, and perhaps for sharing the experience with others.
Disadvantaged Students
One consistent pattern in our results is that the benefits of a school tour are generally much larger for students from less-advantaged backgrounds. Students from rural areas and high-poverty schools, as well as minority students, typically show gains that are two to three times larger than those of the total sample. Disadvantaged students assigned by lottery to receive a school tour of an art museum make exceptionally large gains in critical thinking, historical empathy, tolerance, and becoming art consumers.

It appears that the less prior exposure to culturally enriching experiences students have, the larger the benefit of receiving a school tour of a museum. We have some direct measures to support this explanation. To isolate the effect of the first time visiting the museum, we truncated our sample to include only control-group students who had never visited Crystal Bridges and treatment-group students who had visited for the first time during their tour. The effect for this first visit is roughly twice as large as that for the overall sample, just as it is for disadvantaged students.

In addition, we administered a different version of our survey to students in kindergarten through 2nd grade. Very young students are less likely to have had previous exposure to culturally enriching experiences. Very young students make exceptionally large improvements in the observed outcomes, just like disadvantaged students and first-time visitors.

When we examine effects for subgroups of advantaged students, we typically find much smaller or null effects. Students from large towns and low-poverty schools experience few significant gains from their school tour of an art museum. If schools do not provide culturally enriching experiences for these students, their families are likely to have the inclination and ability to provide those experiences on their own. But the families of disadvantaged students are less likely to substitute their own efforts when schools do not offer culturally enriching experiences. Disadvantaged students need their schools to take them on enriching field trips if they are likely to have these experiences at all.
Policy Implications
School field trips to cultural institutions have notable benefits. Students randomly assigned to receive a school tour of an art museum experience improvements in their knowledge of and ability to think critically about art, display stronger historical empathy, develop higher tolerance, and are more likely to visit such cultural institutions as art museums in the future. If schools cut field trips or switch to "reward" trips that visit less-enriching destinations, then these important educational opportunities are lost. It is particularly important that schools serving disadvantaged students provide culturally enriching field trip experiences.

This first-ever, large-scale, random-assignment experiment of the effects of school tours of an art museum should help inform the thinking of school administrators, educators, policymakers, and philanthropists. Policymakers should consider these results when deciding whether schools have sufficient resources and appropriate policy guidance to take their students on tours of cultural institutions. School administrators should give thought to these results when deciding whether to use their resources and time for these tours. And philanthropists should weigh these results when deciding whether to build and maintain these cultural institutions with quality educational programs. We don't just want our children to acquire work skills from their education; we also want them to develop into civilized people who appreciate the breadth of human accomplishments. The school field trip is an important tool for meeting this goal.
Jay P. Greene is professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, where Brian Kisida is a senior research associate and Daniel H. Bowen is a doctoral student. Additional materials, including a supplemental study and a methodological appendix, are available. For more, please see "The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2019."

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The Educational Value of Field Trips - Education Next

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Crystal Bridges; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; School Tour © 2013 Stephen Ironside/Ironside Photography Bo Bartlett - "The Box" - 2002 * Oil on Linen * 82 x 100 - Photographer is Karen Mauch The school field trip has a long history in American public education.

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Learning Expeditions: Rethinking Field Trips

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Learning Expeditions: Rethinking Field Trips

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Learning Expeditions: Rethinking Field Trips

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When Did You Learn It? How Background Knowledge Impacts Attention and Comprehension in Read‐Aloud Activities

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When Did You Learn It? How Background Knowledge Impacts Attention and Comprehension in Read‐Aloud Activities

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Research on background knowledge and how it impacts reading proficiency

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Resource and video on thematic units

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Welcome to the Wesley Education Research Center

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Educators see many advantages for using thematic units as students become active participants in the authentic, meaningful experiences these units offer. The following list identifies some of the benefits of thematic units.

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Twenty-six studies point to more play-based learning for young children

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Twenty-six studies point to more play-based learning for young children

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Studies that support the need for play-based learning in early childhood

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Twenty-six studies point to more play-based learning for young children

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Play-based learning has the potential to reduce inequality, report finds

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New Research Makes a Powerful Case for PBL

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New Research Makes a Powerful Case for PBL

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Studies on the impact PBL can have for students, including raising test scores

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When Gil Leal took AP Environmental Science in his junior year of high school, he was surprised by how different it was from his other AP classes. Instead of spending the bulk of the time sitting through lectures, taking notes, and studying abstract texts, his class visited a strawberry farm in the valley nearby.

It wasn't just for a tour. Leal and his peers were tasked with thinking about the many challenges that modern farms confront, from water shortages to pest infestations and erosion. More surprising to Leal: Students were asked to design their own solutions, incorporating what they had learned about things like soil composition, ecosystem dynamics, and irrigation systems.

Now an environmental science major at UCLA-and a first-generation college student-Leal sees the visit as a pivotal moment that led to his decision to pursue science in college. He had never visited a farm before, and was used to a traditional sit-and-listen learning model.

"In other classes, it was lecture, readings, test," said Leal, "but in AP Environmental Science we worked on projects with other students, discussed our ideas, considered different perspectives-and I learned so much more this way."

Leal's AP class, taught by Brandie Borges, is part of a new generation of classes that transform traditional teacher-led instruction into a more student-centered, project-based approach-requiring students to work together as they tackle complex, real-world problems that emphasize uncertainty, iterative thinking, and innovation. Proponents of project-based learning (PBL) argue that it fosters a sense of purpose in young learners, pushes them to think critically, and prepares them for modern careers that prize skills like collaboration, problem-solving, and creativity.

Critics say that the pedagogy places too much responsibility on novice learners, and ignores the evidence about the effectiveness of direct instruction by teachers. By de-emphasizing knowledge transfer from experts to beginners, the critics suggest, PBL undermines content knowledge and subject fluency.

While project-based learning and direct instruction aren't incompatible, evidence that might settle the deeper controversy over PBL's effectiveness has been sparse. Only a handful of studies over the last decades have established a causal relationship between structured project-based learning and student outcomes-in either direction.

But two major new gold-standard studies-both funded by Lucas Education Research, a sister division of Edutopia-conducted by researchers from the University of Southern California and Michigan State University, provide compelling evidence that project-based learning is an effective strategy for all students, outperforming traditional curricula not only for high achieving students, but across grade levels and racial and socioeconomic groups.

Reimagining Advanced Placement Courses

The two studies involved over 6,000 students in 114 schools across the nation, with more than 50 percent of students coming from low-income households.

In the AP study, which included Gil Leal's class along with over 3,600 students in both AP Environmental Science and AP U.S. Government and Politics courses from five districts serving a diverse student body, researchers looked at a broad range of project-based activities in the sciences and humanities.

In one example, students in Amber Graeber's AP Government class took part in a simulation of an electoral caucus. Meanwhile, instead of simply reading about Supreme Court cases, students in Erin Fisher's class studied historic cases and then took on real-world roles, arguing the cases in mock court, acting as reporters, and designing campaign ads and stump speeches to make their case.

Researchers found that nearly half of students in project-based classrooms passed their AP tests, outperforming students in traditional classrooms by 8 percentage points. Students from low-income households saw similar gains compared to their wealthier peers, making a strong case that well-structured PBL can be a more equitable approach than teacher-centered ones. Importantly, the improvements in teaching efficacy were both significant and durable: When teachers in the study taught the same curriculum for a second year, PBL students outperformed students in traditional classrooms by 10 percentage points.

The study results nudged at entrenched ideas about how to best teach students from different backgrounds. "There's a belief among some educators and some policymakers that students from underserved backgrounds... aren't ready to have student-centered instruction where they're driving their own learning," said USC researcher Anna Saavedra, the lead researcher on the AP study. "And so there's this idea, and the results of this study really challenged that notion."

Nationally, the researchers concluded, 30 percent of students from low-income households take AP tests, but that number jumped to 38 percent for students in PBL classrooms-there are more low-income students taking AP tests using project-based learning, and more are passing as well.

It may seem counterintuitive that a student-centered approach is effective in an environment that's so focused on high-stakes testing, but the results suggest otherwise.

"Students felt like the work was more authentic," said Saavedra, suggesting a possible explanation for the improvements. "There were more connections to their real lives. For example, in the AP Environmental Science course, they were learning about their ecological footprint and thinking: How do my behaviors affect the health of my community and of the larger world?"

Authentic Learning

But project-based learning isn't just for high school kids. In Billie Freeland's third-grade class, PBL not only builds students' interest in science but also helps them make more connections with the world around them, generating a deep understanding of-and appreciation for-science, she says.

"Third-grade students work on the 'Toy Unit,'" said Freeland. "But don't let the name fool you.... Third graders learn the concepts of gravity, friction, force, and direction by designing toys from simple objects such as water bottles, straws, and recycled milk cartons. The unit ends with them designing their own toys that use magnetic or electrical force," she told researchers, while emphasizing that the projects are aligned with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Freeland's class was one of dozens involved in the large-scale study examining the effectiveness of PBL in elementary science classes. In the study, researchers from Michigan State University and the University of Michigan studied 2,371 third-grade students in 46 schools who were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual control group or a treatment group. The schools selected for the study were diverse: 62 percent of the schools' student bodies qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, and 58 percent were students of color.

Like the high school students in the AP study, elementary students in PBL classrooms outperformed their peers, this time by 8 percentage points on a test of science learning. The pattern held across socioeconomic class and across all reading ability levels: In the project-based learning group, all boats rose on the tide-and both struggling readers and highly proficient readers outperformed their counterparts in traditional classrooms.

"The beauty of all of this, which is really quite lovely, is that we have PBL in science, a progression of it, from elementary through high school," said Barbara Schneider, a professor of education at Michigan State University who worked on the study. "Our findings are consistent all across elementary and secondary school, which is really quite remarkable. And in both cases, we're looking at substantial increases in science achievement."

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New Research Makes a Powerful Case for PBL

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Two new gold-standard studies provide compelling evidence that project-based learning is an effective strategy for all students-including historically marginalized ones.

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Using "Realia" to Build Background Knowledge

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Using "Realia" to Build Background Knowledge

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Albuquerque teacher Ali Nava describes the "realia" activity she used to introduce Burro's Tortillas and some of the items she brought into the classroom for the lesson.

School Name: Lew Wallace Elementary School, Albuquerque, NM

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Ali Nava is an elementary teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico and a member of the first-grade cadre in our Common Core in Albuquerque project.In this video, Ali describes the "realia" activity she used to introduce Burro's Tortillas and some of the items she brought into the classroom for the lesson.

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10 examples of using realia

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BridgeUniverse - TEFL Blog, News, Tips & Resources

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By Camille Turner
July 27, 2020

If you're a teacher, chances are that you've used "realia" at some point in your classroom (especially if you teach young learners) and you may not have even realized it! Whether you've held up a real object to elicit a vocabulary word from students or brought in a special item from home to grab your students' attention, you're using realia. If you are beginning to learn how to teach kids English, looking for a way to spice up your online classes, or trying to find fun activities for adult learners, using realia is a great technique to help your students learn!

What is realia?

Simply put, realia refers to authentic objects from real life that one uses in the classroom to teach a specific concept. Realia can be both physical and virtual, as long as it is something used in the real world (rather than created specifically for an ESL class).

Why use realia in the classroom?

Realia for ESL can make the learning experience more memorable and create connections between objects and vocabulary words or other language concepts. This can make it easier to recall information. For in-person classes, it adds a kinesthetic element for people who learn better with hands-on activities. For online classes, it provides a visual aid to engage students. Additionally, realia is more dynamic than a written word or flashcard used to teach a concept.

What are some examples of realia?

Realia can incorporate what's already in your classroom, such as a desk, chair, or poster. Or, it can be something you've brought from outside class, like a collection of colorful brochures, a stuffed animal, tickets, or souvenirs you got while traveling. While any of these will work for both an in-person class or an online class (for the latter, simply hold the objects up to your screen), you can also make use of virtual realia in the online classroom. Virtual realia refers to authentic resources found online, such as advertisements, photographs, menus, receipts, or maps. Similar to using props to teach English online, incorporating realia into the virtual classroom engages students and makes for a livelier class.

How is realia useful to English teachers?

Realia reinforces language skills and appeals to both visual and kinesthetic learners of all ages. Most teachers use realia to demonstrate the meaning of vocabulary words. Think of the difference between teaching students the words for fruit versus showing them the real thing and having them guess the name. It's especially helpful when teaching students whose native language (L1) you don't speak.

How can I use realia in the ESL classroom?

ESL realia can be incorporated into a ton of fun activities that can liven up your in-person or virtual classroom and get students excited about learning English. Here are ten to get you started!
Watch an excerpt from the BridgeUniverse webinar, "Using Tradiational and Digital Realia When Teaching English Online."
Realia activities for young learners

1. Recreate the realia

Young students love arts and crafts, and getting them to make their own version of a newspaper, train ticket, or other realia that you've shown them is a great way to solidify the lesson. It helps make vocabulary memorable and gets students to apply what they've learned. Plus, this one can be done in both an in-person class and an online class.

2. Scavenger hunt

You can hold a scavenger hunt both inside and outside the classroom to review a number of subjects such as nature or classroom objects. To use as a game for younger kids or beginner learners, ask them to find an item for each color or shape. This activity gets students moving and teaches them to differentiate between vocabulary words, but it also allows you to assess who has a firm grasp of the lesson and who may need additional help. It's also a great activity for the virtual classroom, as students can quickly find objects around their own homes.

3. Following directions

One of my favorite ways of using realia is to give students directions to carry out with the objects. For instance, if you're teaching prepositions, have students take out the items from their pencil bags, and give directions like, "Put the pencil under the eraser" or, "Put the eraser in the pencil bag." Or, for a lesson on comparing objects say, "Hold the pencil higher than the eraser." It's a great way to make students active participants in the lesson. Again, this game can easily be played in both the physical or virtual classroom.

4. What is it?

Fill a bag with realia and have students take turns trying to guess what one of the objects is by putting their hand in the bag and feeling it. They can use vocabulary to describe the object to their classmates as they guess. This game can be adapted to the virtual classroom by hiding an object in a bag or under a cloth. Students can look at the shape and listen to you describe the object (e.g., it's heavy, it's round, etc.) while they try to guess what it is.

5. Ask students to bring in their own realia

Get to know students better by asking them to bring in several items from home that they feel represent them. If you're teaching online, students can hold objects up to their camera instead. Have them present these items to the class and explain why they chose each object. For a variation of this activity, have classmates guess how the objects represent their fellow students. Students love to share things about themselves and are usually excited about activities that involve getting to talk about their own lives.
Teaching ESL virtually? Bridge's new Micro-credential course in Games and Activities for the Online Classroom (Young Learners) has plenty of tips to make your class more fun.
Realia activities for teens and adults

6. Act out a scene

No matter what concept you're teaching, acting out scenes and roleplaying is a wonderful way to help students memorize the material and encourage speaking skills through an easy activity. Try using realia to inspire the students and really get them invested in the role they're playing.

For example, if you're teaching a lesson focused on ordering food at a restaurant, bring in some food items and a menu and have students take turns acting out a scene in which one student is the waiter and another is the customer. Realia will help them generate lines and guide them to review essential vocabulary.

Students can act out situations in the virtual classroom as well. Tell them to bring certain items to class ahead of time, and then have them use the objects to create a dialogue with another student(s). If the teaching platform you're using allows it, enlarge the camera feeds of the students currently acting so the rest of the class can easily see who is speaking.

7. Incorporate realia into a writing prompt

To make writing assignments come to life, bring in random objects and place them at the front of the classroom. Have students write a short story (either with or without a prompt) incorporating all or a certain number of the objects. This activity gets students to think outside of the box and reflect on how we use the vocabulary they've learned in everyday life. It's another great one for both the physical and virtual classroom as well, as you can simply hold the objects up to the screen if you're teaching online.

8. Island survival

Bring in a handful of items and divide students into small groups. Have each group discuss which three things they would choose to have with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Have them explain why they chose each object and how they would use it. You can modify this activity by changing the number of items students can pick or by having them discuss how they could use each item you brought in. If you're teaching online, simply turn the game into an individual activity and hold the objects up in front of your camera to show them. Students can take turns sharing their thoughts.

9. Price guessing game

Set up a row of objects (either on a desk at the front of the classroom or on a table in front of your webcam) and have students try to guess what each of the items costs. Reveal the real prices at the end of the activity. This is a great game to play to practice numbers and shopping vocabulary (e.g., how much does it cost, is it expensive, etc.). You can alter this activity to have students try to organize the objects from the least expensive to the most expensive, which can help with giving commands, vocab related to directions, and more, e.g., move the basketball to the left of the T-shirt. You can also choose a theme-like groceries or clothing-for the objects in order to target specific vocabulary.

10. Memory

If you're in a virtual classroom, quickly pass objects by the screen, one after the other. See if students can recall which objects they saw and whether they can name them in the correct order. If you're in a physical classroom, you can set the items out on a desk and hide each object under a cloth or paper bag. Then, lift the bag/cloth for a few seconds to reveal the object. If you're wondering how to teach vocabulary, this is a great activity, as you can choose items from a specific theme/category (food, sports, objects that are different shapes or colors, etc.).

To learn about more games and activities to incorporate into your classroom, check out our Specialized Certification courses in Teaching English to Young Learners and Teenagers.

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10 Fun Ways to Use Realia in Your ESL Classroom

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By Camille Turner July 27, 2020 If you're a teacher, chances are that you've used "realia" at some point in your classroom (especially if you teach young learners) and you may not have even realized it!

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Resource for bringing in an expert from the field

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Skype a Scientist matches your classroom, scout troop, or library with scientists for Q&amp;A sessions for free!

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One of the most effective teaching strategies for teachers at every level is an invitation to a guest speaker to visit the classroom. Including other voices in the classroom invites different perspectives and shows that learning is a collaborative effort. It is important to remember, however, that inviting a guest speaker is not simply intended to give the teacher a break or a rest from daily routines. Students have the opportunity to learn something new or hear a new perspective on a topic that interests them from a guest speaker. Students can also discover a new interest in a topic where previously they had little interest.

The guest speaker is the "real world" arriving in the classroom. The speakers might be parents presenting during Career Week, nurses and doctors discussing health issues, or an engineer giving background information on bridges before the annual craft stick bridge building contest.

A guest speaker supports subjects a teacher may not know a lot about and shows students that teachers are not the final word on important topics, issues, or current events. The guest speaker will educate students but can also be a good resource for the teacher as well.

Inviting local guest speakers is great for creating community-school relations too. In most towns, regardless of the population, there are people who can be invited to the classroom as guest speakers. Some of the invited people may be lifelong citizens and will open the eyes of students about topics or issues they did not know existed in their community. Having them in the classroom brings the wider community into the student's lives.

The guest speakers have a chance to connect with students, meeting them in an environment they may not have been a part of since they attended school. It may encourage local guest speakers to become more involved with the school or district by sharing ideas, offering opportunities for students, or simply becoming the "go-to" person when the school needs assistance, financial or otherwise.

Parents are another great source for guest speakers. Though parents are often extended an invitation to speak during career week, attend an open house, or observe the classroom, many are willing to speak to students like any other professional guest speaker. Most parents would love the opportunity to speak to students at the school and it does not necessarily need to be in their son or daughter's classroom. At the beginning of each school year, send a notice to parents asking if they would be interested in being a guest speaker and ask about their interests or skills that can be beneficial to students. You never know what unique skills or experiences parents have.

Having guest speakers in the classroom is fun. Besides the lesson students learn, many guests enjoy the attention and students look forward to hearing a different voice. They ask questions, are encouraged to seek more information, and students may become inspired by a guest speaker and interested in the subject when hearing about it firsthand.

Before you decide to host a guest speaker, contact the intended speaker to establish a date and time. Inform the guest of any technology that might be available for their use and ask the speaker of other needs they may have for their presentation. When booking the guest, inform him or her of the total number of students, as some guests like to bring handouts or other items for students. Make sure to allow time for a Q&A session at the end of the presentation too.

In addition, remember to remind the guest speaker of the allotted time for the presentation. Often, guest speakers who spend the day are surprised at how draining the experience can be as many are not used to speaking to a group of excited children in a classroom or auditorium setting. You may want to consider asking the speaker if you can record the presentation for future use as well.

Depending on the topic of the presentation, remind the guest speaker about the importance of being sensitive to the ages of the students in the classroom. For example, some guest speakers are used to speaking to other adults and their peers and may forget the ages of the classroom audience. An insensitive remark may lead to an embarrassing situation or a complaint from a parent later that evening. Furthermore, remind speakers to teach students instead of simply speaking to them. A good guest speaker will engage students and not simply lecture them about their expertise or topic.

Next, it is important to prep your students before the guest speaker's presentation. Prepare the students about the topic the guest speaker will be presenting. The guest speaker's topic should be related to recent lessons or to the curriculum, so students will likely already have some background information related to the subject. Challenge them to listen carefully and consider asking students to prepare a set of questions they would like to ask the speaker during the Q&A session.

Once the guest speaker leaves, conduct a debriefing session with the students, held either immediately or the next day. The session will maximize learning and the more you talk about what they have just learned, the more they will benefit from it. In addition, some guest speakers encourage feedback from the audience following their talks. A simple evaluation by students of the guest speaker's presentation may be appreciated and will also benefit the speaker.

Finally, follow up on the guest speaker's presentation with a thank you card, note, or a small gift. It may be something made by the students ahead of time and presented to the speaker at the end of the engagement or sent immediately following the speaker's presentation. In addition, a small article may be written for the school newspaper or local community paper or online publication detailing the speaker's presentation in your classroom or at the school.

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One of the most effective teaching strategies for teachers at every level is an invitation to a guest speaker to visit the classroom. Including other voices in the classroom invites different perspectives and shows that learning is a collaborative effort.

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Ocean Heroes: Coastal Frontline Communities and Climate Justice
Made possible with support from the Bezos Family Foundation and Students Rebuild
The health of the oceans is suffering, and this has affected some of us more than others. Coastal communities, and those who are less-advantaged because they have less access to resources and face increased societal oppression, are more at risk from rising sea levels and storms. But there are some amazing groups working around the world to make change, educate their communities and build collective awareness. One featured partner, Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS), creates K-12 content about sharks, skates and rays, the threats they face and conservation efforts to protect them. Courses include video lessons, activities, quizzes and action items.

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Our virtual field trips allow your students to travel the world and explore natural environments without leaving the classroom. Start your adventure here!

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NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind.