Effective teachers can organize the environment to provide students with active,
hands-on learning and authentic tasks and audiences. Opportunities for “active” learning
experiences, in which students are asked to use ideas by writing and talking about them,
creating models and demonstrations, applying these ideas to more complex problems, and
constructing projects that require the integration of many ideas, have been found to
promote deeper learning, especially when they are combined with reflective learning
experiences. Teachers can develop learning activities with real purposes, audiences, and
activity structures that mirror those outside of school settings. By encouraging discourse
among students about ideas, concepts, and relationships they can create environments
where the teacher is not the only source of knowledge. Teachers can also organize
reflection on activity and analysis of ideas and products that enables learners to transform
activity into broader understandings.