Ditch That Textbook

TEACHING | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

10 ways to make lessons more hands-on

Here are 10 hands-on ideas from the classroom and what we learned about hands-on learning from
them:

1. Get your hands dirty — literally!

A mess is memorable. Think of times when you’ve spilled something or stumbled upon a catastrophe by
your kids in your home. It sticks in our brain because it’s unexpected just like frog dissection did on Evan
Mosier and Dr. Matthew Friedman. Harness that power and let kids get messy!

2. Make real-life connections.

The answer to “How will I use this in real life?” always makes content more relevant. I love Sheldon
Soper's idea to have kids grocery shop with their parents because it helps kids and parents work
together in learning in the context of something everyone does — grocery shopping!

Mandi Tolen has her students create scaled objects from the classroom to explore scale factor. Check
out this blog post to bring this lesson to your classroom.

3. Give students opportunities to become designers.

The maker movement and design thinking are hot topics in education right now. And for good reason!
Designing, creating, changing, iterating, improving — they’re all good for the brain. Check out these
ideas from Sarah Warren, Craig Klement and John Hartmann.

Also, visit this post — Design thinking: 10 key ideas for even more ideas.

4. Bring math to life.

Real-life math isn’t as clean and simple as worksheets often suggest it is. Data is messy and often doesn’t
make sense. Bringing physics, geometry and other math concepts to life helps kids deal with that reality.
See how in this watermelon catapult lesson shared by Craig Klement and this cupcake fractions lesson
from James Varlack.

(See the final product of the watermelon catapult lesson here.)

5. Let students lead.

You really have to know your stuff to teach. (We know that as well as anyone as educators!) That goes
for students, too. Adam’s Juarez shared a great example and uses the model where he “trains students
to train classmates.”
Zac Eash breaks students up into groups to learn a game. The groups then observe each other playing
the game and try to guess the rules.

6. Try a problem with no clear solution.

We don’t have to have all the answers as teachers. We don’t even have to know the answer to what
we’re working on! Tisha Richmond shared a lesson that includes cooking without a recipe — a recipe for
failure but certain learning.

Francois Provencher shared how in a University Applied Social Science class students were not given
directions but had to come up with something then reflect on the group process.

7. Invent ways to bring textbook concepts to life.

New ideas make some sense in the book. Pretty flow charts can help. But when you see it in real life, it
clicks.

8. Explore and discover.

Discovery is powerful. Students find things on their own and make sense of them. That’s what I love
about the activity that Jill Weber shared — students start with a sandbox and end with new learning. (Jill
has a great, very thorough blog post about it too.)

9. Use video.

It’s easier than ever to make video — and to make it compelling. Sounds like a great opportunity for
hands-on learning.

Use the idea Megan Hacholski shared and create stop motion, or check out these blog posts about using
video in the classroom:

10. Fail until you get it.

It’s OK to fail — even though our schools seem to be built around the idea that we should avoid it. We
can help students to fail forward and learn when things don’t go as planned. The leaks in the lesson that
Lanny Saretsky shared show that!