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Best Practices: Students in the Driver’s Seat

By Anthony Cody

There is great value in learning the basics. We cannot write without an alphabet, or understand chemistry without the Periodic Table of Elements. But Henri Poincaré said, "Science is built upon facts much in the same way that a house is built with bricks, but the mere collections of facts is no more a science than a pile of bricks is a house!" I think our students get bored with the collecting of facts, but when they get to build for themselves, engagement grows.

Students can best learn science by actually doing science. They get excited about learning math when it helps them accomplish something useful. They learn history when they become historians. The key is to put the student in the driver’s seat.

My science students enjoy doing hands-on investigations, but I have found they sometimes get bored when the procedure is laid out for them like a recipe in a cookbook. Mix part A with Part B, observe, record, and answer the questions...