Hands-On Learning Hands Down!

Hands-on learning.  This has become the secret weapon at our school. In our teacher PD days this year, I recommended to our teachers that they focus on hands-on learning (even though the curriculum provided is exclusively online lessons). They took it to heart! I walk through the school and see so many cool lessons happening. Marshmallows, raw spaghetti, and playdough might be used for the math lesson, and clay totem poles are created in Social Studies. I teach one class per week, and after one of my classes (where I was shooting for a discussion after a video) went terribly, I looked at the teacher who is with those kids all day, and I asked her how she does it. She said, "oh I don't actually do much speaking at all. It's all hands-on activities or I can't get their attention." Boy was she right! Even though I had recommended a hands-on emphasis, I realized that day just HOW important it is to consistently approach lessons with these kids with their learning in mind as an active part of the lesson, instead of the traditional passive learning we so often employ.

Kids with trauma are higher kinesthetic and tactile learners than the general population. (I read this in a study somewhere, if I find it again I will post a link). Kinesthetic learners need movement to learn and tactile learners need to manipulate physical objects to learn. So to get them involved in their own learning, it's so incredibly helpful to minimize your lecture-based material, and make everything you can into a hands-on experience or incorporate movement. 

How though? You already have your curriculum, your lessons. Well, even small adjustments can create a more hands-on experience for students. So even if it’s just a worksheet, an example of one idea would be to cut the questions into separate strips and place them at different stations around the room and let students move around filling in an answer sheet.  This gets them moving and out of their desks. 

Use physical space to show math concepts (have students walk up and down stairs when learning to add and subtract negative numbers. Draw a huge chalk graph outside and give each student an (x,y) pair and then have them walk across the graph and stand at that point.  For multiplication, give them wooden cube blocks  (For multiplying 2x3 = make a rectangle with 2 blocks on one side and 3 on the other side.  How many blocks in the rectangle?). 

For social studies, use art projects to learn about topics.  Have them create collage posters. Act out a historical event. List social studies concepts on index cards and have students sort them by physically putting the cards in various groups or in timeline order.

If you teach ELA, print out sentence strips and have them build a paragraph. Teach them to highlight text to find evidence. Use props with reader's theater to give them something to hold or wear. Do art projects that represent ideas in the readings.

For science, use as many hands-on science experiments and manipulatives as possible. Consider a class garden that can be given a few 15 minute slots a week for weeding, planting, pruning, etc. Give them prisms to play with when studying light. Build small circuits when studying electricity.

Bring in items for them to touch and manipulate.  When you can’t do that, use art.  When you can’t use art, use movement. If you must lecture, make it short and give them cloze notes or doodlenotes, or use PearDeck/Nearpod and make the lecture interactive. Make sure they have something to DO while listening to the (short) lecture.

If you are trying to teach kids with primarily visual and auditory delivery methods, (like my awful attempt at a visual video and audio lecture/discussion) you will absolutely lose the kiddos who have higher trauma exposures. And likely, they will end up being a distraction because they are disengaged from the learning. I cannot emphasize enough how critical it is for these kids to be able to engage with learning in a hands-on way.

It takes some adjusting from the traditional "sage on the stage" type of teaching that has become so ingrained in us. But you'll be SO much more successful with these kids if they can move or get their hands on something while they are learning. It's worth the adjustments to engage the learning. I promise!