While in college, we were given an assignment to propose a question, research it, and perform a study to gather data and draw a conclusion. Myself and another Resident and TAMUC, Sarah Brown, proposed the question, "How does student centered learning and exploration effect academic retention?" We found numerous peer reviewed articles and compiled an enormous amount of research that ultimately guided us to the perfect method to follow to gather our own data. We could not have picked a better topic, because the Kindergarten lesson that we were going to be teaching was a very  student-centered, authentic learning type of lesson. The students were to create a Plantitarium wherein they had to keep a plant system and two critters (a ladybug and an Isopod) alive. They planted the plants themselves, watered them daily, and even went as far as to search for their Isopods during their recess time. Before introducing the lesson, we presented the students with a pre-assessment as a way to gauge their prior knowledge of the plant system. In return, we presented them with a post-assessment to gauge how much they retained from the unit. Our question came into play before the post-assessment.  We introduced our Kindergarten classes to the idea of a student-centered "Grand Conversation" where they lead the conversation, bouncing ideas off of one another all while diving deeper into the material that they were learning. We found that the classes that participated in the Grand Conversation scored higher on the overall post-assessment than the students that did not. We both concluded the study knowing the true benefit of student-centered learning. Below is the link to the presentation that we made to share our findings.