1 Epic Way to Increase Student-Centered Learning in Your Science Classroom

I will say, student-centered teaching and learning has not been the easiest thing to wrap my brain around. Seriously though, when I was in school, science teaching consisted of my teachers giving me a textbook, and I would have to read and answer the questions at the end of the text. Of course, we had to write the questions AND the answers, but that was it. If my teachers taught, they would stand in front of the classroom while we soaked it in and wrote down our notes.

We might have done a hands-on activities or project every once in a while, but it was rare.

Well, now, education has changed SO much, and I’m trying to keep up. You feel me?

One of the strategies that’s being used in the classroom now is student-centered learning, and guess what? I love it! My room wasn’t completely student-centered, but it’s a goal I work toward, and I’d love to share my process!

student-centered learning in science — I love the student-centered learning approach in the science classroom.

Characteristics Of Student-Centered Learning

So, what exactly is student-centered learning? It is allowing your students to take control of their learning by setting up the environment that suits the individual learner. If you’re like me, there are things such as student schedules, lack of resources, etc. that prevent me from going all in, but there are steps that can be taken to get to the goal of student-centered learning and at least provide differentiation in the classroom that gives your students more choice and leeway to take control of their learning.

Here are 3 characteristics that you might see in a student-centered classroom:

Choice: Student choice is key. This gives students a say in what and how they are learning the content in your class.

Student Voice: If students have a voice in their choices and the classroom, there will be a better chance that they will be more interested in what they are doing and more likely to take ownership.

Monitoring: This is important. As the teacher, you are the facilitator of a student-centered classroom. You have to monitor students changing needs so you know how to best serve them.

list of characteristics and strategies of student-centered learning — Which of these 3 characteristics of student-centered learning do you see in your classroom already?

Why is Student-Centered Instruction Important?

Why is student-centered learning effective and important? Student-centered learning is important for so many reasons.

First of all, it helps to create student buy-in which is INCREDIBLY important. If you work in a similar school as I do, student buy-in is hard to come by right now. I don’t know if it’s the current state of affairs, being out of school for some time, or what, but my middle school students worry about everything else, except for their learning. However, if they are taught to take control of their learning and are given choice in the speed that they learn, they are more likely to work towards a goal.

Second, it allows you to get a bigger picture of where your students stand in class and who needs help. As students are doing their own work, you can see who is ahead, who is behind, who needs help, etc., because, instead of standing in front of the class, you are walking around and helping students that need it the most.

Third, it allows for natural differentiation. Let’s say that you are teaching a unit on weather and atmosphere. All of your students may start learning about the composition of the atmosphere. As some of your higher students finish up the lesson faster, they can begin working on other items that you have planned for enrichment. Maybe they can start a hands-on activity to explore further, maybe they can work on task cards, etc. The possibilities are endless.

What about the students that are falling behind? This is your opportunity to do small groups and help them to succeed.

Last (in this blog post, but really there are many, many reasons), student-centered learning prepares them for the future workforce. The workforce is changing, 9-5 jobs and pre-defined work are slowly fading and transition to working at your own pace, many times from home, and focused on getting outputs and getting the job done. Student-centered learning helps to prepare them for the real-world.

Positive student-centered learning outcomes are tremendous.

Student-Centered Learning Techniques

There are many examples of student-centered learning strategies in the classroom, but I just want to review one EPIC one in this post. There is a LOT that you can do to make your classroom student-centered, but the first thing that you can do is to start SMALL.

So, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the one epic strategy is…. you can either choose to flip your classroom or spin your classroom. This is just the FIRST step in creating a student-centered classroom.

To do this you can choose to create videos for your students to take notes from, or my personal favorite, digital interactive lessons. Digital interactive lessons allows students to read through notes, but instead of having to copy them down in a notebook, they are reading and applying the knowledge that they learning, and even better, the lessons is broken into chunks to help reduce cognitive load, and therefore, students retain information better.

The students can then store their notes in Google Drive. NO MORE LOST NOTEBOOKS!

So, to what makes this students-centered. As students are working on their lesson, let’s say, Punnett Squares. They work through the questions on their own or even with a partner. They finish while the rest of their classmates are still working, so what’s next. You can give them a choice. They can start with a group of task cards, watch a video to explore further, play online games, create their own quiz, etc. The possibilities are truly endless with this model.

For the students that take a little longer, you can take them into small groups to help them finish up the lesson.

There is so much more that can be done to differentiate and set-up student-centered learning in your class, but this is the first step, especially with the time constraints for our school schedules with grades due at a certain time, tests having to be completed on certain days, etc.

This is an AWESOME start!