Two common threads running through the tapestry of these different learning patterns are student ownership and student empowerment . Ownership is perhaps the most effective way for a student to remember a concept. Ownership is the reason that we recall the projects that we created in school more clearly than anything else we did in our classes.
Empowerment allows students to adapt the acquisition of concepts and data to their learning style.
Each group will consist of a team leader, a scientist, an engineer, and a technician. The groups will be provided with an exciting and challenging learning activity with an outcome deliverable at the end of the class. The activity will require the students to work together to 1. discover new concepts about the physical world, 2. analyze the mathematical relationships involved in the concepts, 3. design a solution through application of the mathematical concepts, and 4. construct a working prototype to fulfill the activity. Uncover the central concepts of the activity and associate key concepts with mathematical relationships. Use the concepts and relationships discovered by the scientist to design a set of possible solutions to the task.