91 Percent: How Fifth Graders Learn

by Edutopia Staff

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Percentage of class time fifth graders typically spend listening to a teacher or working alone, according to a recent study. Only 7 percent of study time is spent working in small groups, which foster social and critical-thinking skills; similar results were found in first and third grades. Researchers carrying out the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in Science magazine, spent thousands of hours in more than 2,500 first-, third-, and fifth-grade classrooms.

Source: National Institutes of Health, Science magazine

This article was also published in the June 2007 issue of Edutopia magazine .