Hands-on learning is essentially learning by doing. The most effective hands-on activities are ones that closely mimic a real-world scenario. There are many great advantages to this learning style.
Increased Retention
Teachers sometimes grow frustrated when they’ve put a lot of time and effort into developing lesson plans, but their students simply don’t retain the information they’ve been taught. However, when they change things up a bit to include hands-on activities students will oftentimes retain much more of the information. In fact, research shows that while students only retain about 5% of what’s taught through a lecture and about 30% of what’s taught by demonstration they’ll retain as much as 75% of what they’ve learned through a hands-on activity. This is because these activities increase students’ engagement and focus.
Increased Engagement
Regardless of how engaging your lecture or presentation is, students can still easily tune it out. This means they’ll miss out on learning at least some of the material – something that won’t happen when they are fully engaged in hands-on learning.
Extra Practice
The old saying is still true today: “Practice makes perfect.” Even students who are naturally gifted in the subject matter can still refine their skills through repetition. This is because practice enables them to better perform a skill once they’ve practiced it in a “controlled environment.” Fortunately, teachers can easily incorporate hands-on activities into their classroom to make this happen.
Risk Mitigation
Novice mistakes are something teachers should nip in the bud right away so they don’t continue building their students’ skills upon a “faulty” foundation. With hands-on training students can master skills before building new knowledge on it. As students are given this opportunity, they can relax and make mistakes knowing that these are something they’ll learn from.
Improved Problem Solving
Through hands-on learning, students can encounter challenges and obstacles they’re able to work through in a “safe” environment. As they do so, they’re able to learn how to solve various types of problems without feeling pressured because their teacher and their peers are there to help and support them as they do so. This helps them be better prepared to deal with such problems in the future.
Clearly, there are many great benefits to using hands-on learning in schools today. If you’d like your child to engage in this type of a learning environment, you should check out Country Club Montessori School in Mansfield, Texas.
