Learning by Teaching Junior High Students Lead Lessons for Third-Graders

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If you teach students a lesson, maybe they'll remember it for five seconds. But if you ask them to teach, they'll remember it for the rest of their lives.

At least that's the theory behind a special school project at Daniel Wright Junior High School in Lincolnshire.

A group of seventh-graders at the school are teaming up to teach a variety of science concepts like force, motion and friction to third-graders in Lincolnshire-Prairie View Elementary District 103.

"When a child has an opportunity to teach that concept to another, it helps them gain a conceptual framework of understanding," said Anne Reichel, district staff development coordinator. "The reason why we're doing it ... it is something that is research-based."

Several leading theories on brain compatible research as it applies to education have identified the ways in which students sustain material.

Research states …