"We're making a chair we can actually sit on; and they're going to build a vehicle!" one second grader jumps up to explain to a visitor.
He points to a group of three boys huddled together working furiously on the carpet at the front of the classroom. "And they're making a mansion."
All out of recycled cardboard, fasteners, and tape.
The boys are working through the engineering cycle to build their own large-scale cardboard projects, collaborating in teams to create a functional structure. Active learning, motor activity, making products, teamwork and competition, all of these elements, called transitive factors, are at play in this science unit.
At Saint David's, through our Teaching Boys Initiative, faculty are partnering with our resident visiting scholar Dr. Michael Reichert, renowned researcher in boys' education. Dr. Reichert and his co-researcher Richard Hawley conducted seminal international studies demonstrating the importance of incorporating transitive factors in lessons for boys.
As Reichert and Hawley define it, transitivity is: "the capacity of some element of instruction — an element perhaps not normally associated with the lesson at hand — to arouse and hold student interest. That is, the motor activity or the adrenal boost of competing or the power of an unexpected surprise in the classroom serves not merely to engage or delight; it is transitive — it attaches to and carries along learning outcomes."* These factors augment boys' engagement, and learners are able to master concepts at deeper levels.
The two boys trying to make a chair that can support their weight will understand reinforcement, load distribution, that a material's strength is affected by changing its form. Along the way, they will struggle, fail, rethink their approach, redo their design. When they succeed, they will have grasped the scientific concepts underlying the project and be well positioned to extend their learning to the generation of new products. They also will have learned how to collaborate with each other, sharing ideas and responsibilities.
Throughout our program, boys explore science and technology concepts through hands-on investigation, scientific experimentation, and engineering projects.
Sometimes, that involves the intentional use of technology to achieve desired learning outcomes.
Sometimes, all you need is some cardboard, tools, imagination, and determination.
*Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley, Reaching Boys: An International Study of Effective Teaching Practices, Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 91, No. 4, December 2009/January 2010, pp. 35-40.