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Active Learning engages students in their own learning through hands on activities and a focus on reading, solving, creating, and analyzing. Our purpose is to show how the implementation of active learning in our fieldwork classrooms promotes learning amongst all types of students, encourages student engagement, and enhances connectivity to content. In addition, how it leads to expanded opportunities for teacher feedback and guidance, and more purposeful, visible, active work that demonstrates progress on learning targets. We focused specifically on using active learning strategies that captivate student attention and incorporate a “real world” application piece, leading to learning and personal growth in contexts inside and outside the classroom. These strategies, when combined with cultivating classroom community and Lev Vygotsky’s Social Learning Theory elevate a student’s learning experience and make it more meaningful. We each created a developmentally appropriate unit plan, composed of four lesson plans that integrated active learning, classroom community, and Social Learning Theory. They were each taught in our fieldwork classrooms at different elementary schools in the Conejo Valley.

Teaching and learning should never go out of style, but sometimes creativity is key for up-to-date designs, or in this case, lesson plans! It is becoming more common that teachers are playing catch-up with trying to relate or understand their students in the classrooms daily. After many studies and field research, we found active learning to be vital in a classroom. Active learning allows students to use their knowledge to make information meaningful, powerful, and engaging in their lives, inside or outside of the classroom. The purpose of active learning increases engagement and learning retention of students while helping students process and comprehend what they are learning. By putting meaning into the material, the information is flowing from both directions, through teacher and students, which ultimately allows students to make what they are learning relatable. Methods behind this include building community, knowing your students, relationships, active learning, and making it real. The time and effort it takes to effectively help students allows for personal and communal milestones and accomplishments to be met, and students respond better when they feel valued.

Active learning cultivates collaborative, hands on, thought provoking, genuinely engaging, and a team work based learning experience. It promotes that students remember material through personal experiences by making memories. It contrasts traditional lecture style because the goal is to get more out of the students, connectivity to content. Active learning creates more purposeful, visible, active work, that promotes student autonomy, critical thinking, and builds community. These attributes create trust and comfortability in the classroom which ensures effective student learning. Teachers can incorporate active learning into a science lesson in order to help students remember and understand the phases of the moon. The students created a moon mobile that displayed the eight phases of the moon, they also were able to adventure outside to view the moon to see what phase it was currently in. This lesson plan allowed students to get out of the classroom and be hands on which ultimately enables them to connect their work with the current phase of the moon. This active learning strategy appeals to most of the five senses which helps students internalize what they are learning and stay engaged. The goal of this project is to effectively encourage active learning in lesson plans. In conclusion, students responded extremely well with this activity. After assessing what they learned through verbal assessments, the students were able to understand the phases of the moon. Afterwards, the students mobiles were displayed throughout the classroom which made them proud of their work.

Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory, emphasis social interaction in a learning environment, meaning there is learning coming from the collaboration between both students and teachers. This idea further supports active learning, which we define as an approach where information flows in both directions, students absorb, collaborate and create content. This creates an environment in the classroom where students are up and speaking to one another, learning from each other’s experiences and creating work that reflects their proficiency in a subject. The Social Development Theory and active learning has created a foundation in our own teaching, where we have fostered a learning community that has interconnectivity, inclusion and substantial meaning. Through interconnectivity, the students learn to trust and support each other as well as build compassion within the classroom. Through inclusion, all the needs of the students are met, including students with learning or physical disabilities and English learners. Finally, substantial meaning refers to giving meaning to student learning by applying to their own realities and the real world.

As future teachers, we have concluded that teaching with active learning strategies, students are more engaged and the learning process is more purposeful. Active Learning is a student-centered strategy that engages the student and encourages them to participate in their own learning. Less time is focused on the teacher and a greater focus on the student developing, reading, solving, creating, analyzing, and summarizing. The purpose of our research is to analyze and witness the positive effects that active learning activities have on focus and comprehension in the students we have worked with. Throughout the units that each of us have taught, we have implemented various active learning activities to excite students about learning and create a lasting memory of the knowledge they have learned. As a group, we have taught a total of twenty lessons, four in a third grade classroom, four in a high school physical education class, four in a first grade classroom, four in a fourth and fifth grade split classroom, and four in a college nutrition and health class. With the implementation of active learning and a conclusion of the results that we have received, we witnessed the positive effect that active learning creates in the learning journey of each of the students we have taught.