A pedagogical mantra at Oak Knoll is that our students, “Live by Faith, Learn by Doing, and Lead by Example.” Nowhere is this more apparent than during the winter semester, in grade 6, in the STEM unit on systems of the body. 

In small two-person teams, the students select an anatomy system and work over several weeks to create a lesson plan, handouts, presentations, demonstrations, and assessments. Each small team then takes a turn commandeering an entire class period to serve their classmates as teachers for the day. Throughout the process, they have effectively become experts in their assigned system.

After all the groups have completed their teaching sessions, the class is well-versed in the digestive, skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, cardiovascular, nervous, and muscular systems. In addition, they have learned that no one system dominates; they are all interconnected and interdependent.

“The project draws heavily on metacognition,” explained Grades 3-6 STEM Teacher Regina Cherill. “They’ve been students for so many years, and this project allows them to reflect on learning from a different angle and to increase their awareness and understanding of their thought processes.” 

As students research and share significant parts of their assigned system and what’s needed to keep it healthy, Cherill gives them free rein to connect a current event to their instruction. For example, the students teaching concepts relating to the muscular system profiled a company pioneering the production of lab-grown beef using cloned muscle tissue. The cardiovascular teaching group discussed artificial hearts, while the nervous system students discussed recent developments in Alzheimer’s research.

As part of their lesson plan, the student teachers must incorporate some form of hands-on instruction in the presentations.

One group teaching the skeletal system put forth an entertaining lesson in which they had classmates build figures out of Play-Doh and try to make them stand. The task was almost impossible due to the product’s lack of rigidity. The student teachers then handed out toothpicks to represent the bones of the skeletal system, and the students successfully made their figures stand up.

Each team was also required to create an assessment (often taking the form of a review game) administered at the end of their lessons to assess how effectively their fellow students absorbed the class content.

“The students love this project,” related Cherill. “It puts them in a different role in the classroom. In sixth grade, we’re especially building leadership skills, public speaking ability, and interpersonal communication between team partners, as they share a workload and learn by teaching.”