The Learning Grove gives teachers a simple, research-backed framework for project-based learning — so every lesson is something students actually remember.
"When a student builds something, argues for it, and shares it — that's not just learning. That's ownership."
Our Framework
Hook their attention. Build something together. Reflect and share it. Works in any classroom, with any subject.
Start with a game, a puzzle, or a surprising question that gets everyone talking before the lesson begins.
Small groups tackle a real challenge together — building, testing, writing, solving. Mentors ask questions, not give answers.
Students explain their thinking to the class, get feedback, and connect what they built to the bigger idea.
Where We Work
From Oakland to Bihar, the same framework in every classroom — adapted for every context.
Weekly after-school workshops for 80+ students in K–5, running project-based math and literacy every session.
Monthly workshops in my grandfather's village, run by a local ambassador using our low-resource project kits.
Free lesson plans, project guides, and professional development for any educator who wants to teach this way.
Watch & Learn
Short videos showing what each phase looks like in a real classroom.
Project-Based Learning · Any Classroom · Any Subject
Three phases that any teacher can run tomorrow — no new materials, no extra planning, no student left behind.
Before any instruction, you need their brain switched on. A game, puzzle, or surprising question does this in 5–8 minutes — and makes everything that follows stick better.
⏱ 5–8 minutesWhen students are curious or surprised, their brains release dopamine — a neurotransmitter that literally prepares the brain to learn. A good hook isn't just fun. It's physiologically changing the brain's readiness to take in new information. Starting with direct instruction before students are engaged means the content competes with distraction from the start.
The best hooks create a question the student genuinely wants to answer. They don't need fancy materials — just a surprising setup, a playful challenge, or a puzzle with no obvious right answer. The goal isn't to teach the concept yet. The goal is to make students want to know.
Works for math, literacy, or science. No materials needed beyond a projected image or a printed card.
Curiosity activates the hippocampus and the brain's dopamine reward system simultaneously — the same state that drives the brain's deepest encoding. A 2014 study found that curious students remembered even incidental information far better than non-curious students. The hook creates this state on purpose, before any instruction begins.
The core of the lesson. Students work in small groups on a real challenge — something they can touch, test, argue about, and improve. The teacher's job is to ask questions, not give answers.
⏱ 20–35 minutesWhen students work to solve a problem — especially before they've been fully taught how — they remember the solution far longer than if they'd been told the answer first. Struggling productively with a real challenge creates a "need to know" that makes instruction far more effective when it comes. The project is also where students develop the ability to work with others, communicate their reasoning, and persist through difficulty.
Groups of 3–4 work best. Give a clear challenge with a testable outcome. Set a time limit. Then step back. The mentor's entire job during the project phase is Socratic — circulate and ask "why did you try that?" and "what would happen if you changed this?" Never suggest a solution.
Build the tallest freestanding structure that holds weight. Constraints get harder by grade level.
Attempting to solve a problem before receiving instruction — even unsuccessfully — is called "productive failure." Research by Manu Kapur (2016) shows that students who struggle first and then receive instruction outperform students who receive instruction first, on both retention and transfer. The struggle is not a problem to fix. It is the learning.
The phase most teachers skip — and the most important one. When students explain their thinking out loud to someone else, they consolidate learning in a way that nothing else can match.
⏱ 10–15 minutesExplaining something to another person forces students to organize their thinking, identify what they actually understand vs. what they assumed, and communicate ideas precisely. The reflection phase also creates emotional closure — students feel proud of what they made, which strengthens the memory of the whole lesson. Without a share-out, the project is just an activity. With one, it becomes a learning event.
Sharing doesn't have to be a formal presentation. It can be a quick pair-share, a gallery walk, a 30-second "commercial" for their project, or a whole-class debrief where the teacher connects what groups built to the underlying concept. What matters is that every student articulates their thinking in some form before the lesson ends.
Not a grade. The mentor reads these before the next session to know what to revisit in the hook.
Explaining your reasoning out loud — called the "self-explanation effect" — produces significantly stronger learning than passive review. When students articulate why their tower fell or why their story ending changed the theme, they activate the brain's meaning-making networks, which consolidate the lesson's core concept into long-term memory. Chi et al. (1994) showed this effect rivals one-on-one tutoring.
Here's what a 60-minute session looks like, minute by minute.
A puzzle or a quick demo. No instruction yet — just questions, reactions, and curiosity.
Groups of 3–4 tackle the challenge. You circulate and ask "why" — never give the answer.
Pairs share first. Then 2–3 groups present to the class. End with the 3-question exit ticket.
Oakland · Bihar · Growing
Two programs. One framework. Hook, build, and share — everywhere.
Every week, Learning Grove mentors run after-school workshops for 80+ students in kindergarten through 5th grade. Every session follows the Hook → Project → Reflect & Share structure, with grade-differentiated challenges in math and literacy.
Students have built paper towers, designed dream classrooms, rewritten story endings, analyzed data about their school, and built parachutes — all while learning to present and defend their thinking to an audience.
In my grandfather's rural village in Bihar, India, our local ambassador runs monthly workshops for girls using our low-resource project kits. Every kit contains a hook activity, a project challenge, and share-out prompts — designed to work with zero technology and minimal supplies.
Girls have built paper bridges, drawn village maps, and run their own mini science fairs to share their projects with community members.
We're looking to partner with other schools in Oakland and beyond. All resources are free.
Updated Weekly
New projects, partnerships, and dispatches from Bihar — updated every week.
We partnered with Project Coin, a nonprofit that teaches entrepreneurship to kids, to run a joint workshop. Students designed and "sold" their own mini products — a hook that got every student talking before the project even began.
80 students built paper towers in teams of 3–4. The hook: a demo showing why triangles are stronger than rectangles. The share-out: each group explained their design before testing. Every student spoke.
Our study on attention and working memory — conducted at Stanford's Brainwave Learning Center — has been accepted for publication. It directly shaped how we design the hook phase of every lesson.
Our Bihar ambassador ran the Paper Bridge Challenge with 18 girls. The share-out: each group presented their bridge and explained one thing they would change if they built it again.
The People
A group of high school students who believe every kid deserves a chance to build something real.
Junior at the College Preparatory School. Stanford Brainwave Learning Center research assistant since 8th grade. Published author in the Journal of Emerging Investigators. Founded The Learning Grove in 2024 to make project-based learning accessible to every classroom — from Oakland to Bihar.
Associate Director of the Stanford Brainwave Learning Center. Expert in educational neuroscience and global equity in education.
TK/Kindergarten workshop lead. Designs hooks that get 5-year-olds genuinely curious before the project starts.
2nd grade lead. Runs share-outs where every student speaks before the session ends.
4th grade engineering challenge lead. Has never given a student the answer to their own project.
High school students: come run workshops, design projects, and learn what it means to teach well. No experience needed.