Take me home! lessons
A simple way to connect what your students are learning in the classroom with their community.
Take me home! lessons are a recent addition to a number of Stile units. These simple, structured homework tasks are designed to extend your students' science experience beyond the classroom and help them recognise that science happens everywhere, not just in the lab!. Take me home! lessons encourage students to connect their learning from school to their family and extended community, putting the onus on students to drive these connections. All you need to do as the teacher is provide a platform for discussion.
It’s important to offer students variety (see our previous blog post on this very subject) so Take me home! lessons come in a few different styles:
- surveys or interviews on key social issues
- cooking projects
- "adopt-a-species" programs
- family tree research
- and much more.
Connecting to students’ experiences, communities, and backgrounds
Making connections between in-class learning and lived experience will help your students build on their existing knowledge to form deeper levels of understanding. With the home recognised as one of six key areas that contribute to learning (Hattie, 2023), having students bring science home with them has clear benefits. For one, it places them in a position to consider how their science skills and knowledge apply to the specific interests and demands of their community. Who knows, maybe your students will teach their parents something!
Teacher support and student agency
Each lesson comes with teacher notes that recommend how to introduce and follow up on the task with students. It’s important students have a chance to tell their stories and celebrate their findings. For this reason, we encourage making time for students to share their task results in class and honour their work. Take me home! lessons give students agency in how they engage with those around them. They get to choose from interview questions, survey items or recipes as different ways of exploring science and decide who to reach out to in their community, whether it be someone at home or farther away. Take me home! lessons are the perfect way to increase the visibility of student learning for important stakeholders: their parents and guardians. It helps them see the value of their child’s science education in their lives.
Students as science communicators
Take me home! lessons are the perfect vehicle for students to take science conversations home with them. The tasks require students to engage with community members about their understanding of science. They provide excellent opportunities for students to practice their science communication skills and understand the importance of tailoring their message to suit a wide range of audiences and scientific literacy. Why? Because we want students to graduate as scientifically literate citizens who are ready to tackle tomorrow’s problems. Seeing the connection between what they’re learning in class and the world around them plays an important part in that.
Explore a Take me home! lesson
Keen to assign a Take me home! lesson to your students and get them connecting their learning to their home life? If your school uses Stile, jump into the following units to take a look:
- Cells
- Ecosystems
- Genetics
- Non-contact Forces and Electricity
- Energy
Don't have Stile at your school? Chat with our team about trialling Stile here.
Reference list
Hattie, J. (2023). Visible Learning: The Sequel: A Synthesis of Over 2,100 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003380542.