Eight year old children are capable of a lot more than most people give them credit for!
A group of British schoolchildren may be the youngest scientists ever to have their work published in a peer-reviewed journal. In a new paper in Biology Letters, 25 8- to 10-year-old children from Blackawton Primary School report that buff-tailed bumblebees can learn to recognize nourishing flowers based on colors and patterns.
“The greatest lessons in life, if we would but stoop and humble ourselves, we would learn not from grown-up learned men, but from the so-called ignorant children.” –- Mahatma Gandh
Studies from Science; Nature; and Mind, Brain, and Education all support the notion that children learn better when the lesson is relevant.
Good news for good teachers: It turns out, the old drill-and-kill method is not only boring, but –neurologically speaking — pretty useless. Relevant, meaningful activities that both engage students emotionally and connect with what they already know are what help build neural connections and long-term memory storage (not to mention compelling classrooms).
“If you want the higher levels of performance that come with trust and collaboration, demonstrate your trust in others before asking for trust from them. Leaders go first, as the name implies” (Kouzes & Posner, 2007, p. 227)
Recent Comments