What is Active Learning?

Active learning is a method of teaching and learning that engages students in activities with a clear educational purpose, rather than just listening to lectures or reading textbooks. It aims to give students a deeper understanding of the material they are being taught. It helps them develop their critical thinking skills, gain new insights into concepts they may not have considered before, and apply knowledge in new situations. If you are new to homeschooling, you have probably asked yourself, what is active learning, and is it the right approach for my homeschool? This blog post will cover hands-on learning in detail.

It is a teaching style that requires students to be actively engaged in the learning process. This can include hands-on activities, discussion, group work, or even games and experiments.

Active learning has been shown to be more effective than passive learning (just listening to videos or reading books) for many reasons:

Increased engagement means that your child is more likely to remember what she’s taught.
Active learners will often ask questions or volunteer information when they don’t understand something—this helps you identify any misconceptions early on.
There’s more opportunity for group participation, allowing students who might normally feel shy about speaking up to feel more comfortable speaking out during class discussions.

Active Learners Apply Knowledge

It is a hands-on approach to learning that allows students to actively participate in the process of understanding and retaining concepts. It requires students to be engaged with the material rather than just passively listening and taking notes. This can lead to higher levels of thinking, such as critical thinking or creativity. You can use Outschool or DIY.org to facilitate group discussions for your homeschool student. You can also get game-based curriculums such as ABCya or Education.com, which help students interact with the material in a hands-on way that is mentally stimulating.

Is Active Learning More Beneficial than Passive Learning?

There are many cases where active learning is more beneficial than passive learning. In most instances, students who are involved in hands-on learning can retain the information better than if they were to simply sit and listen. To learn best when they practice what they’re being taught, rather than just being told about it by a video, you, or something they have read.

When you think of an active learner, what comes to mind? You probably imagine someone who is very involved in their schoolwork and has high levels of motivation to succeed in school. Although these qualities certainly make for a good student, there’s more that defines an active learner:

Engagement and participation in conversations
Hands-on activities that have a real-world application
Asking questions throughout lessons
Sharing opinions/ideas/thoughts publicly through discussions or presentations
Working together on projects such as Minecraft worlds or artwork

Benefits

Active learning is a more beneficial, effective, engaging, and memorable way to learn than passive learning. Active learning is a great way to get students interested and involved in their learning material.

It’s also better for retention because it involves more sensory stimulation and memory retention triggers that help students retain information longer.

Live Outschool classes are one of the best ways you can use active learning techniques with your child to get them involved in group discussions with others!

Pitfalls

As you’ve no doubt heard, active learning is all the rage these days. It’s a great way to encourage student engagement, but it also can come with some pitfalls.

If you’re interested in switching from passive to active learning, here are some things to consider:

The time commitment for you as the instructor is higher for an active lesson than for a passive lesson. You may need additional prep time before class and more follow-up work afterward due to the complexity of some activities.
If your homeschool has multiple students who have never participated in class before, in this way, it may become overwhelming to them.
Not every lesson or assignment can be made into an active or hands-on lesson.
Not every lesson needs to be active.

Is this Learning Style Righ for Your Child?

Active learning is a great way for students to learn at home. It can be applied to almost any subject area and is easy to implement. All you need is a little creativity and some free time on your hands! If you need some interesting curriculums to help you implement active and passive learning styles, check out our top five curriculums for kids!

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What is Active Learning?