Piaget’s fundamental insight was that individuals construct
their own understanding; learning is a constructive process.
At every level of cognitive development, students must be
able to incorporate information into their own schemes. To
do this, they must act on the information in some way. This
active experience, even at the earliest school levels, should
include both physical manipulation of objects and mental
manipulation of ideas. As a general rule, students should
act, manipulate, observe, and then talk and/or write about
what they have experienced. Concrete experiences provide
the raw materials for thinking. Communicating with
others makes students use, test, and sometimes change
their thinking abilities.