23 Search Results for "neuroscience"

• Catching Z’s: Why are our stud Catching Z’s: Why are our students sleeping in class?

  • From: Ryan_Thomas1
  • Description:

    Though there were a number of cardinal offenses when we were students, none—perhaps with the exception of cheating—was greater than to be caught sleeping in class. Now that we’re educators, we get it: It’s frustrating to find students napping through important lectures or in-class discussions. What’s making students so “tired?” Does it have to do with boredom, laziness, stress, health issues, all of the above?
    
    

    Catching Z’s: Why are our students sleeping in class?
    
    
    According to Russell Foster, a neuroscientist and director of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at University of Oxford, sleeping in class actually has more to with natural fluctuations in “the biology of human sleep timing.” Let’s explain.
    
    

    Forster’s research suggests that the biology of human sleep timing changes as we age. Once we hit puberty, bedtimes and waking times get later, a trend that continues until 19.5 years in women and 21 in men. Then it reverses. At 55 we wake at about the time we woke prior to puberty. On average this is two hours earlier than adolescents. This means that for a teenager, a 7 a.m. alarm call is the equivalent of a 5 a.m. start for people in their 50s.
    
    

    Why does this happen?
    Foster isn’t entirely sure, but the shifts do correspond to hormonal fluctuations that increase when we hit puberty and decline as we age. Of course, biology is only partially to blame. The proliferation of technology, cultural disregard for the importance of sleep and relaxed bedtime schedules only complicates things.
    
    

    What do we do with this information?
    A half decade ago, many who attended Foster’s conferences scoffed at his suggestion that administrators rethink school start times. More recently, however, educators have started to accept and structure the academic day around adolescent sleep patterns—and the results have been overwhelmingly positive.
    
    

    In the U.K., Mokkseaton High School instituted a 10 a.m. start time and found “an uptick in academic performance.” Studies of American students revealed similar results: academic performance and attendance improved; sleeping in class and self-reported depression declined.
    
    

    Whether or not educators decide to push back start times, Foster does caution our disregard for the importance of sleep. Here are a few reasons our students should start taking sleep more seriously:
    
    

    • Research has shown that blood-glucose regulation was greatly impaired in young men who slept only four hours on six consecutive nights, with their insulin levels comparable to the early stages of diabetes
    • Long-term sleep deprivation might be an important factor in predisposing people to conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension
    • Tiredness also increases the likelihood of taking up smoking.
      
      

    If you are interested in learning more about Foster’s research on sleep, he has written a book called Sleep: A Very Short Introduction.

     

    

    

  • Blog post
  • 3 weeks ago
  • Views: 140

• Performance and the Fundamenta Performance and the Fundamental Way of Being

  • From: Adrian_Bertolini
  • Description:

    "You cannot have performance breakthroughs without cognitive dissonance ... in other words ... challenging what you think you really know and believe is the truth."

     

    The more that I work with schools, the more I realise how important it is to coach teachers and school leaders in having personal performance breakthroughs as part of the journey to creating a high performance learning culture in a school. What I have been finding is that it is the unconscious limitations a person imposes on themselves and/or the individual’s ingrained habits and practices that can limit or slow down the building of an authentic learning culture.

    In my coaching one of the first tools I use I gleaned from Steve Zaffron and David Logan’s book called “The Three Laws of Performance”.  The Three Laws are:

    1.       How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them

    2.       How a situation occurs arises in language

    3.       Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people

    So what influences how situations occur to people?

    Let me delve a little into the neuroscience here. In the simplest description, our brains are pattern making machines that, through trial and error of experience and learning, create a template or mental model of how the world is so the individual can successfully interact with the world around it. As a short cut to operating in an increasingly complex environment, the brain creates unconscious habits and practices for those actions that are ritualised. For example, most of us don’t have to think about walking. We just walk. We put one step in front of the other not consciously recognising the extraordinary coordination required of our brain and body to have this happen. For those of us who drive to work, many of us drive home from our normal place of work mostly unconscious because our brain “knows” where it is going.

    As we grow up there are there spans where we undergo large physiological and neurological changes. These include the period from being a baby / toddler to a child (gaining of language), a child to a teenager (puberty), a teenager to an adult (pre-frontal cortex and executive decision making). These neurological developmental changes are critical periods in our lives as it is at these times that we lay down certain foundational or fundamental ways of being (mental models or templates). Based on these templates we build our interpretation and reaction to the world around us.

    My experience in coaching people over the past 15 years is that in areas where individuals lack performance they have not overcome the programming that originated when they were children. Have you ever experienced an adult who still throws tantrums like they were 6? Have you noticed that some people can’t seem to organise themselves and still act like they are teenagers in managing themselves and their time? Have you noticed the emotions and feelings that come up when you are confronted by conflict in the workplace (most teachers avoid constructive conflict like the plague)!

    In those areas where you experience being challenged to develop yourself or you lack performance, your actions are logical and consistent with a childhood perspective or viewpoint of that situation. How a situation occurs to us is correlated to our fundamental way of being or mental model that originated when we were quite young.

    Conversely, in those areas you do perform, at some point in your life you challenged your childhood mental model and “grew up” in that area. You went through a period of cognitive dissonance and challenged and re-circuited your hardwired habits and practices in that area.

    Let me give you an example. I come from an Italian family and my viewpoint of my father when I was young was that he was not very communicative, he didn’t really show his love for me like my mother did, and that when I did something wrong (which being the middle boy of three boys we always got up to some mischief) he yelled at us and we occasionally got smacked. So I decided at quite a young age that I would “never be enough”. When you look at my behaviour over a long period of time it is not surprising that I am always out to prove myself and succeed in whatever I do. I have three degrees including a Ph.D. I taught Aerospace Engineering (including … yes … rocket science). I came second A LOT, in sport as well as academically, and it frustrated me no end. I know myself as someone who, no matter what I am given, will figure it out and become successful at it. Within this fundamental way of being I have developed particular habits and practices that enable me to learn and develop myself. It isn’t surprising that education is one of my fields of interest.

    The problem with the Fundamental Way of Being is that until I became become conscious to how it was driving me in everything, and the cost it had to my well-being and just being able to be in relationship with people, I had no power to choose to behave in a different way. I was very hard on myself and overanalysed everything. My brain was always whirring and busy so I found that I was constantly exhausted to make up for NEVER being enough. I was quite often surrounded by “fools and idiots” and became frustrated with people when they didn’t understand me. I lacked empathy for others.

    The Fundamental Way of Being is not a bad thing as it has you gain a certain success in life. But like any ritual habit it drives you to behave in particular ways in circumstances that other ways of behaving are more appropriate. You cannot begin to change a habit until you have become present to how it is driving you. Until then you are the passenger in the car that is your behaviour.

    When I coach teachers and people in leadership positions I give them two pieces of homework involving reflective journaling.

    1. At least 2-3 times per week spend 5-10 minutes reflecting on their day and write down experiences from the day that they felt driven by their fundamental way of being. It will feel uncomfortable at times. The intention of the first piece of homework is to have them become self-aware of when their machinery, that is their ritual behavioural pattern, is operating.
        
    2. The second piece of homework is to write down, what they would do differently next time in each situation that arose that day. They could also acknowledge any victories where they took a different action from the one normally given by their mental model. The intention of this part of the homework is to start challenging the ingrained behavioural patterns so that they can create new patterns. In some ways this is about growing up to be an adult!

    What I have found is that, over time, people start to produce remarkable results and shift their behaviour in those areas where they felt stuck or unable to develop and grow.

  • Blog post
  • 2 months ago
  • Views: 113

• Beliefs about Learning and the Beliefs about Learning and their implications for teaching and learning

  • From: Elliott_Seif
  • Description:

     

    This commentary is co-authored by Elliott Seif and Jay McTighe

    Over the past twenty years, research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience has significantly expanded our understanding of how people learn[i]. Yet educational practice has not always kept pace with this new knowledge.

    The ten statements below are an attempt to synthesize the latest research about learning. The statements, along with their suggested implications (in italics) for sound educational practice, provide a framework for developing a research-based learning framework[ii] These learning principles and their implications can be used to start a discussion of what “research-based” learning principles should be adopted by teachers, schools, and districts in a 21^st century world. A commitment to the principles and a focus on their implications might also lead to significant changes in curriculum, assessment and instructional practice. Once in place, they provide a conceptual foundation for all classroom and school reform initiatives.

    As a means of better aligning theory and practice, teachers, schools and districts should develop or adopt a set of learning principles based on research and best practices. As you read these principles and their implications, ask yourself: How would we adapt these principles to conform to what we believe are current learning principles? What changes do they suggest for schools and /or classrooms? What would it take to make student learning consistent with these principles?

     

    Ten Research-Based Principles About Learning and Their Implications

     

    1. Learning is purposeful and contextual. Therefore, students should be able to see the purpose in what they are asked to learn.To create purpose, pose relevant and “essential” questions, create meaningful challenges, conduct investigations, and/or use inquiry/problem-based learning strategies.

     

    2. Experts organize or chunk their knowledge around transferable, core concepts (“big ideas”) that guide their thinking and help them to integrate new knowledge. Therefore, content should be “chunked” and instruction framed around core ideas and transferable processes, and not learned as separate, discrete facts and skills.

    
    

    3. Learning is mediated and enhanced through different types of thinking, such as explanation, classification and categorization, inferential reasoning, analysis, synthesis, creativity and metacognition. Therefore, students should continually be engaged in complex thinking activities to help them deepen learning.

    
    

    4. Understanding is revealed and demonstrated when learners can apply/transfer/adapt their learning to new and novel situations and problems. Therefore, students should have multiple opportunities to apply their learning in meaningful and varied contexts.

     

    5. New learning is built on prior knowledge. Learners use their experiences and background knowledge to actively construct meaning about themselves and the world around them. Therefore, students must be helped to actively connect new information and ideas to what they already know and build on current understanding and skill development.

    
    

    6. Learning is social. Therefore, teachers should provide opportunities for interactive learning in a supportive environment.

    
    

    7. Attitudes and values mediate learning by filtering experiences and perceptions. Therefore, teachers should understand how student attitudes and values influence learning and help students build positive attitudes towards learning.

    
    

    8. Learning is non-linear; it develops and deepens over time. Therefore, students should revisit, refine, and revise core ideas and skills in order to develop more sophisticated and complex learning and understanding over time.

    
    

    9. Feedback enhances learning and performance. Therefore, on-going assessments should provide learners with regular, timely, and user-friendly feedback, along with the opportunity to use it to improve learning.

    
    

    10. Learning is enhanced when a learner’s preferred learning style, prior knowledge and interests are effectively accommodated. Therefore, teachers should pre-assess to find out students’ prior knowledge, learning preference and interests. They should customize instruction to address the significant differences they discover, and promote individualization through choice and options.

    
    

    *Note: To read more about Learning Principles, see Chapter 4 of Wiggins and McTighe, Schooling by Design (ASCD, 2007)

     

    ---

    [i] For example, see Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, Washington, D.C. National Academy Press; also Willis, Judy, 2006, Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

    [ii] Adapted from ten learning principles originally published in Jay McTighe and Elliott Seif, An Implementation Framework to Support 21^st Century Skills, in Bellanca and Brandt (2010).  21stCentury skills: Rethinking How Students Learn (Solution Tree Press), Chapter 7, p. 153.

     

    Jay McTighe is an educational consultant and the author and coauthor of ten books and numerous articles, including the best-sellingUnderstanding by Design series with Grant Wiggins. His website can be found at: www.jaymctighe.com.

    Elliott Seif is a long time educator, Understanding by Design trainer, author, and consultant. His website can be found at: www.era3learning.org

    

     

  • Blog post
  • 3 months ago
  • Views: 214

• Bilingual Brains – Smarter & F Bilingual Brains – Smarter & Faster

  • From: Judith_Willis
  • Description:

    Psychology Today

    Published on November 22, 2012 by Dr. Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed. in Radical Teaching

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/radical-teaching/201211/bilingual-brains-smarter-faster

     

    Bilingual Brains – Smarter & Faster

     

     

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/radical-teaching/201211/bilingual-brains-smarter-faster

     

     

     

    By Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed.

     

    A Gift Parents Can Give Children that Money Can’t Buy

    Recent studies of children who grow up in bilingual settings reveal advantages over single language children, including both increased attentive focus and cognition. The findings correlate with prefrontal cortex brain activity networks, which direct the highest levels of thinking and awareness.

     

    Compared to monolinguals, the studied bilingual children, who had had five to ten years of bilingual exposure, averaged higher scores in cognitive performance on tests and had greater attention focus, distraction resistance, decision-making, judgment and responsiveness to feedback. The correlated neuroimaging (fMRI scans) of these children revealed greater activity in the prefrontal cortex networks directing these and other executive functions. (Bialystok, 2009; Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2007).

     

    This increased executive function activation in the brains of children in bilingual settings extends beyond the translation of language intake and output. The powerful implications of the new research are about brainpower enhanced by growing up bilingual.

    The Brain’s CEO is a Late Bloomer

     

    The networks that appear more active in the brains of bilingual children are part of the brain’s CEO networks, called executive functions. These are a constellation of cognitive abilities that support goal-oriented behavior including directing attentive focus, prioritizing, planning, self-monitoring, inhibitory control, judgment, working memory (maintenance and manipulation of information), and analysis.

     

    It is not during the first months or even years of life that the brain undergoes its greatest changes with regard to cognition. These neural networks of executive functions are the last regions of the brain to “mature” as recognized by the pruning of unused circuits and the myelination of the most active networks that as they become stronger and more efficient.

    Executive functions such as selective attentive focus and the ability to block out distraction are typically minimally developed in childhood. These functions gradually become stronger throughout the years of prefrontal cortex maturation into the mid twenties. It is with regard to these executive functions that research about the "bilingual brain" is particularly exciting.

     What is Happening in the Brains in Bilingual Settings?

     

    This aspect of bilingual research has focused on bilingual upbringing with one language spoken at home that is not the same as the dominant language of the country. The interpretations of researchers, such as Ellen Bialystok who compared responses of 6-year olds from bilingual and monolingual homes, suggest the bilingual brain is highly engaged in the cognitive challenge of evaluating between the two competing language systems. This requires executive function attention selecting and focusing on the language being used while intentionally inhibiting the activity of the competing language system.

     

    When bilingual brains evaluate language, control and storage networks of both their languages are active and available. This ongoing processing, that seems instantaneous, is not reflexive or unconscious. It requires deliberate focus of attention on specific input and withholding of focus from simultaneous distracting input to analyze the language being used. Their brains need to evaluate and determine not only the meaning of words, but also which patterns of sentence structure and grammar apply and recognize nuances of pronunciation unique to the language of focus.

     

    Bialystok describes this massive activity as exercising the executive functions early in bilinguals at work to decipher these multiple codes within each language. These control networks make choices, such as which memory storage circuits are the language-correct ones to activate from which to select the correct word, syntax, and pronunciation. The choices are demanding of a CEO that can simultaneously direct where ongoing new input is sent for successful evaluation and activate the correct language storage banks to use for response. These executive functions simultaneously coordinate the evaluation of the content of the messages and direct the response to that information.

    Implications for Brighter Starts

     

    One of the most significant implications of the bilingual research is the recognition that even very young children’s executive functions appear responsive to exercise which strengthens them for future use. An example from the research is these children’s higher scores on cognitive testing.

     

    This incoming research supports encouraging parents to retain use of their native language in the home, but too often, social pressures and mistaken beliefs often limit children benefiting from the bilingual brain booster.

     

    One problem is parents concern that exposure to one language is less confusing for children. When I taught fifth grade in a school where most of the students’ primary language was Spanish, I recall recently immigrated parents of my students telling me that although they were just learning English, they tried to only speak English at home with their children. They felt that would help their children learn English more successfully and believed that exposure to two languages would be confusing and make the transition to their new schools more difficult.

    Another issue limiting the bilingual experiences was children’s desire to fit in. As my students’ English fluency improved, they would sometimes be asked by their parents to translate from English to Spanish during school conferences or meetings. When they did so, such as during “Back to School Night”, many were clearly embarrassed that their parents didn’t speak English and even tried to avoid having classmates hear them speak Spanish to their parents. When I would ask them about their reluctance, some would tell me that it made their parents seem “ignorant” when they did not speak English. My urging of parents to sustain the bilingual experience by speaking Spanish with their children in the home was thus resisted as children began to develop this bias against their native language.

     

    The mistaken parental beliefs about confusing the brain with two languages and the response to their children’s negative responses to their native language cause these children to miss out on a unique and powerful opportunity to strengthen their highest cognitive brain potentials. One intervention educators and others in the community can do to avoid loss of the bilingual boost is to explain to new immigrants about the research and the strong impact they can have on their children’s academic success by retaining their native language in the home.

     

    The other intervention is to lay to rest the mistaken assumption that the brain has limitations that are overwhelmed with duel language exposure. The more we learn about neuroplasticity, the more it appears the reverse is true. Experiences with new domains of challenge in general seem to strengthen the brain’s executive functions and cognition. This is evident on neuroimaging as well as in performance on the cognitive testing, reading comprehension, and success learning subsequent new languages. New challenges that include the use of judgment, analysis, deduction, translation, prioritizing, attention focusing, inhibitory control, delayed gratification, and pursuit of long-term goals are associated with increasing the number, strength, and efficiency of the executive function networks.

     

    Just like our muscles become stronger with physical workouts, the developing brains of children in bilingual environments appear to build strength, speed, and efficiency in their executive function networks. This is the “neurons that fire together, wire together” phenomenon that in response to the electrical activations of messages traveling through them when used, executive function networks develop stronger connections – dendrites, synapses, and myelinated axons.

    For now, it appears that when families have another language that can be spoken in the home where children are being raised it could be an opportunity to both enrich their language skills and also provide a cognitive boost for their highest brain networks of executive functions.

     

    The implications of the bilingual research raise considerations of what other early exposures before and during school years can be designed to promote these executive function activations in all children. What are the implications regarding introducing second languages to young children from monolingual homes? Perhaps grandparents, nannies, friendships with families who speak another language could spend time with the children, or parents could participate in parent-child language classes suitable for youngsters such as learning and singing songs with movements in another language.

     

    Does the bilingual benefit on cognition also work on older children and adults who learn second languages to the point of fluency? I’ll address some of these questions in my next blog, including the relationship of executive function activation and building new networks of learning with reduction in the manifestations of cognitive degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

     

    

  • Blog post
  • 6 months ago
  • Views: 2068

• Why PBL is Good for the Brain Why PBL is Good for the Brain

  • From: Thom_Markham
  • Description:

    The news coming in about neuroplasticity—the finding that the brain changes dramatically in response to experience—continues to amaze scientists and intrigue the general public. But the news hasn’t yet impacted education, partly because the gap between teaching methods and neuroscience can’t yet be bridged, and partly because our profession, though relying on the brain more than any other, can’t quite fit a standardized curriculum into a new paradigm that has made obsolete the old view of the brain as hard wired and immutable, or even as the repository of a fixed IQ.

     

    However, maybe we need to take a leap of faith and make best guesses about the relationship between brain function and classroom instruction. My guess is this: Based on preliminary findings in neuroscience, I suggest that PBL fits perfectly with what we can surmise about encouraging optimal brain function.

     

    Just to clarify, I’m not talking about cognitive studies showing that working memory—the ability to manage facts and short term responses—can be marginally improved with practice. These studies aim us at better test taking, but little else. The real prize is increasing creativity, problem solving, and fluid intelligence, which is the ability to adapt to new experience. This ability to innovate in response to environment, in fact, seems to be the main message of today’s brain science. It’s what we do as humans. For example, imagine our Neanderthal ancestors around the fire 200,000 years ago. Somewhere in their brains lurked the ability to do AP Calculus, program an Android phone, or parse a presidential debate. What’s lurking in the minds of the 1.5 billion children alive today that can help them manage their adult world? Inquiring teachers should want to know.

     

    So, teaching students in a brain-friendly way is crucial. Here are reasons that I believe PBL supports the brain:

     

    Rich experiences create dense neural networks. Of course, walking alone down a deserted street at 3 a.m. in a dangerous city is a rich experience, especially if you’re being followed. But in the classroom, PBL is designed to offer an educationally rich experience: A complex problem to be solved; multiple inputs and potential solutions; a team-based environment that relies on extensive collaboration; adult interactions; and exhibitions that stretch students. Contrast that with coverage, front of the room instruction, and even low level activities aimed at solving known problems. In workshops, I urge teachers to aim for the top of the new Bloom’s Taxonomy, the sections focused on critical inquiry and creativity. The brain is drawn to those sections as well.

     

    Neural development depends on feedback loops.  The brain has an intelligent system for improving itself. Neural development takes place in areas of the brain most useful to solving the problem at hand. Most of the research these days focuses on understanding the pre-frontal cortex—the site of execution, planning, and problem solving. This is a tricky area, because if you present a problem to a student that is too difficult, it activates the hind brain and the stress response. But an appropriate, engaging, manageable challenge is exactly what the brain likes. The brain, in fact, loves novelty. PBL is an excellent method for inviting novel solutions to authentic problems—a combination that feeds the brain and speeds connections.

     

    Risk and failure feeds the brain. Neuroplasticity tells us that neurons form alliances, hook up, unhook, and reform their networks in milliseconds, always on the hunt for the right response or a new solution. In fact, it seems apparent that without challenge, or in the presence of low level facts, the brain gets bored. Working memory is crucial to us on a daily basis, but if that’s all we used, life would be a monochrome. On the other hand, using a design mentality, with the constant goal of getting better, more thoughtful, and finding more elegant solutions, is second nature to the brain. Quality PBL makes failure, risk, and improvement an integral part of the process of learning. No wonder that, with PBL, teachers see extremely high levels of student engagement.

     

    Integrating thinking and feeling fits with the design of the brain.  The old view that cognition—the ability to think—is separate from the ability to feel is not supported by current neuroscience. The brain operates as an integrated organ, processing emotions and thinking together in the amygdale, limbic system, and other parts of the brain still under investigation. Significant evidence also exists that the heart drives brain function through nervous connections to the hind brain and cortex. This is close to the frontiers of science, so we don’t know much yet as to the exact mechanisms. But it is well established that love, care, and personal mentorship increase educational achievement. In PBL, this is critical. Basically, a teacher won’t get performance in a PBL environment without creating a culture of care and connection. In my view, this sets up the brain for learning. Without the care, the brain says, “No.”

     

    The power of reflection. Studies show that mindfulness increases neural density as much as a multi-stimulus environment. This tells us that the brain doesn’t just respond to massive amounts of information or a super-interesting problem; in some way, it also benefits from stillness and a meditative look at its own performance. In quality PBL, reflection is critical. This includes reflective pauses in the process of a project, as students review and assess their progress in solving a problem, as well as more in depth reflection at the end of a project. The end of the project reflection encourages students to power down and probe their development. Evidently, the brain thinks this is a good idea, too.

     

    Thom Markham is a psychologist and author of the Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators. Download Tools for PBL on his website, www.thommarkham.com or contact him at thom@thommarkham.com.

  • Blog post
  • 7 months ago
  • Views: 2118

• Learning Research; Why we must Learning Research; Why we must Follow

  • From: Tom_McDonald
  • Description:

    Learning Research: Newsletter, Issue #17,  7/13/12

    Learning Research: Teachers learn ways to keep students’ attention, but are brain claims valid?

    
    

    Learning Research: Search 900+ Unique Posts on learning, learning transfer, behavior change, learning technology, sales performance improvement, verbal skills simulation, personalized learning, blended learning and much, much more

     

    Tom McDonald's Comments:

    
    

    We MUST follow the brain based, research proven, market proven learning methodologies!

     

    What is debated (not validated),  as research proven:

     

    • Tablets
      • "Maybe the most frustrating aspect is we can't definitively say whether this program did or did not improve student outcomes, which is obviously the primary goal of any education reform."
      • …"Cram says he hasn’t seen any dramatic improvements in learning since incorporating the iPad, but he anticipates that there will be soon”…
      • Project to evaluate use of tablets in schools
    • Why The Left-Brain Right-Brain Myth Will Probably Never Die
    • Learning Styles: Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely
    • Working Memory Training:  Studies Dispute Benefits of Brain Training
    • Flipped Learning/Classrooms:
      • Does it make sense?
        
      • The difference between live and taped lectures 
      • Don’t Use Khan Academy without Watching Educational Videos: this First
        

     

    What is Validated as Research Proven:

    • Learning Strategies in 2012 
    • Learning on the Job: Myth vs Science
    • Integrating Sales Training and Sales Implementation for Advanced Sales Participant Performance
    • Truly Personalized Learning Technology
    • Truly Personalized Intelligent Tutoring System
      
    • Learning Research
    • The Brain
      • Brain Research
      • Brain Based Learning Research

    Where are you in the spectrum of brain based, learning research proven, market proven learning methodologies? Do you need to learn more about what is proven to work? If so, you are at the right place.

     

    Tom

    
    

    Access The New Differentiated Learning Model Here:

    http://mcdonaldsalesandmarketing.biz/tom-mcdonalds-posts/

    
    

    Access this article and others at:

    http://mcdonaldsalesandmarketing.biz/25763/learning-research-3/

    
    

    Learning Research: By John Higgins, Beacon Journal staff writer, Published: July 11, 2012 | Updated: July 12, 2012

     

    
    Chris Biffle, the creator of Whole Brain Teaching leads a conference of 500 teachers and administrators from as far away as Japan at the Barrette Business and Community Center on the campus of Walsh University Wednesday. Gesturing and repetition are used in Biffle's Whole Brain Teaching technique. (Karen Schiely /Akron Beacon Journal)

    View More Photos >>

    NORTH CANTON: When Chris Biffle called out the word “Class!” Wednesday morning at Walsh University, 450 teachers and administrators yelled back, “Yes!”

     

    “Class class?” he said.

     

    “Yes! Yes!” they replied.

     

    “Classity classity,” he said.

     

    “Yessity yessity,” they chanted back.

     

    Biffle, one of the co-founders of Southern California-based Whole Brain Teaching LLC, is leading a two-day conference at Walsh about his method. He calls the technique “Class-Yes.”

     

    The research page of Whole Brain Teaching’s website says “Class Yes” activates the prefrontal cortex of the brain and “readies students for instruction.”

     

    It’s one of seven techniques the company says “are validated by contemporary brain research.”

     

    The method might be fun, engaging and popular, judging by teacher testimonials and company-conducted polls.

     

    But the techniques are not validated by contemporary brain research, according to two experts in the relationship between neuroscience and education who reviewed the claims for the Akron Beacon Journal.

     

    “Nothing I see here indicates that there is any neuroscientific backing for anything they’re suggesting,” said Dan Willingham, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Virginia.

     

    The Beacon Journal also asked David Daniel, managing editor of the peer-reviewed science journal Mind, Brain and Education to examine the research page at www.wholebrainteaching.com.

     

    “I think he has these ideas that may or may not work, and he’s using brain stuff to market them,” said Daniel, a psychology professor at James Madison University. “The brain stuff on the web page is very cursory, very shallow. That could be just his way of communicating or it could be his level of understanding. Either way, it’s misleading.”

     

    Jeff Battle, a middle school science teacher in North Carolina who says he keeps current on brain research for the company, said teachers aren’t bound by the same level of scientific rigor as neuroscientists.

     

    “I’m not going to give a Ph.D.-level dissertation to a kindergarten teacher who wants to have a vague idea of why this is working so they can explain it if they need to,” Battle said. “We’re not pure science, we’re practitioners who are applying what we’ve learned so far.”

     

    But, Daniel said, when educators misrepresent the science, they make it harder for researchers who are struggling to translate neuroscience into something teachers can reliably use in the classroom.

     

    “It drowns out the softer voice of what’s credible. That’s what’s harmful,” Daniel said. “There are people doing really good work who, if they had a chance, would love to be helping teachers. But they’re getting drowned out by people who are better at marketing, better at speaking and better at selling.”

     

    Biffle and two other teachers founded the private company in 1999 in Southern California that describes itself as “one of the fastest growing education reform movements in the United States.”

     

    The company receives speaking fees for seminars, but otherwise offers videos, e-books and other materials to teachers for free.

     

    Battle says the company operates on a “shoe-string” budget with a staff of about a dozen educators.

     

    The techniques involve a highly structured gesturing and repetition of catch phrases that are supposed to capture and maintain student interest and attention by making the rules more fun to follow than to ignore.

     

    The Whole Brain Teaching website’s research links seven techniques to seven brain areas or systems.

     

    The “class-yes” technique, for example, is supposed to improve learning by activating the prefrontal cortex, a complex, highly evolved part of the brain associated with decision-making, planning and regulation of behavior.

     

    “There’s no evidence that the ‘class-yes’ especially activates the prefrontal cortex,” Willingham said. “Second of all, if that were true, it’s not obvious what that would do, why that would make them more ready to learn.”

     

    Figuring out how to evaluate such claims is the subject of Willingham’s new book, When Can You Trust the Experts: How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education, which will be released this month.

     

    However, Willingham said, the misrepresentation of brain science on the website doesn’t mean the techniques don’t work.

     

    “For some populations, under some circumstances, learning certain things, it absolutely might work,” Willingham said. “We just really can’t tell.”

     

    The company says it has polled more than 2,000 teachers and found that almost all of them rated it better than other teaching systems they had tried.

     

    “What that tells us is that people who use it, like it,” Willingham said. “It doesn’t actually tell us that it works.”

     

    That’s the question David Brobeck, an assistant professor of graduate education at Walsh, wants to answer.

     

    Brobeck, former Field Local Schools superintendent and a longtime teacher, coach and principal in Kent, organized the conference, which was free for students to attend. He estimated the university spent between $12,000 and $15,000 to put on the conference, which included a speaker’s fee.

     

    Brobeck attended a national conference last summer on Whole Brain Teaching and believes it works, but acknowledges the method has no university-level research to support that conclusion.

     

    “I took some time to learn, and then I started teaching it in my grad classes,” he said. “Some of my students started using it in their K-12 classes.”

     

    He said Walsh will offer a class for teachers this fall who will use the Whole Brain Teaching method in their classrooms. The teachers will use “action research” to monitor how well the techniques help them achieve specific classroom goals.

     

    “If you don’t have research and you don’t have a body of evidence, you have to go out and start somewhere,” Brobeck said.

     

    “What we want to know is: Do these things work and why do they work.”

     

    John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the education blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/education.

     

    http://www.ohio.com/news/local-news/teachers-learn-ways-to-keep-students-attention-but-are-brain-claims-valid-1.319731

     

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  • 9 months ago
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• Teach, But Also Inspire Teach, But Also Inspire

  • From: Thom_Markham
  • Description:

    At the start of any new venture, it’s a good idea to set some goals. I suggest one overriding goal for every teacher for the 2012- 2013 school year is to inspire students as well as teach them. 

     

    In an NCLB-crazed world, this sounds almost quaint. 95% of the discussion about education revolves around curriculum—what to teach, how to teach, and how to test the impact of curriculum delivery. A generation of teachers has grown up on a daily diet of one message: If information can just be packaged properly and turned into a list of standards, and then relayed to students in the proper dosage, test scores will rise and all will be well.  

     

    I’m a fan of standards as general guidelines and organizing tools that help us form a consensus on what an educated person ought to know—or, at least, what we currently think that person should know. So teaching facts, concepts, and academic skills are very much part of the job.  

     

    But life has its tidal flows. Arguably, it was necessary for the accountability movement, NCLB, and high stakes testing to rush in to fill the gaps left from the 1990s, when too little attention was paid to outcomes and all students were not taught and supported equally. With the advent of Common Core Standards, project based learning, and a renewed emphasis on inquiry, creativity, whole child education, and 21^st century skills, however, the tide is moving the opposite direction. The packaged curriculum will no longer work—and neither will teaching that lacks inspiration.

     

    I say this for two reasons. First, education has moved swiftly in direction of expecting students to practice and master skillful behaviors related to life management and workplace requirements. Teaching behavior and peak performance rather than facts and concepts requires the services of a skillful coach who can motivate and inspire. Many educators, including top leadership, cling to the notion that skills can be boxed up and taught like the causes of the Civil War or the elements of the photosynthesis cycle. Nothing is further from reality, as companies (which spend millions of dollars trying to get employees to talk successfully with one another) or marriage therapists (who patiently guide spouses through repeated attempts to ‘actively listen’ to one another) will attest. In fact, so-called ‘soft’ skills are really the ‘hard’ skills in life—much harder, as most people know, than preparing for multiple choice tests or writing a short essay.

     

    To succeed in teaching skills, teachers now need to address issues such as personal values, attitude, and intrinsic elements of students’ personalities. For example, teaching students to collaborate in teams sounds easy—until one realizes that it’s difficult to succeed in groups unless one has a healthy attitude toward diversity. That’s called empathy, and it’s not something we ordinarily teach. Similarly, effective interpersonal communication is rooted in self confidence, assertiveness, and self-awareness. 

     

    This is doubly important because education persists in mislabeling personal strengths—or ‘dispositions’, as psychologists define them—as ‘skills’ or ‘habits of mind.’ Resiliency, curiosity, and perserverance are commonly included in this category. These truly are the internal assets necessary to sail through an increasingly non-linear, surprising world. But they originate deep within a person, a product of genes, experience, and willpower. None are easily accessible—and they do not respond to direct instruction. 

     

    So how do you, as a teacher, adjust to the new goal of tapping the inner strengths of your students? The good news is that the ‘how-to’ on inspiring students is not really a mystery. An expansive literature on positive psychology, human performance, and organizational effectiveness has shown us the factors that liberate top performance and encourage purposeful engagement.  

     

    The more sobering news is that education is not yet prepared to fully support your efforts. But here are four steps that will aim you in the right direction as the 2012 – 2013 school year opens up:

     

    • Redefine your professional obligations as a 21^st century teacher. Keep in mind the meaning of inspiration: To fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence; to inspire confidence in others; to influence or impel in a positive way; and to generate a positive view of the future. Mix the information with the vision. Teach the person, not the stuff. Make it your priority to leave your students next June with a better sense of self, values that matter, a can-do attitude, and the certainty that they can handle the future.

     

    • Examine your model of teaching and learning. The original root of education—educare, ‘to draw from within’—lies buried under the accumulated mass of education’s infatuation with behaviorism, neuroscience, all manner of educational ‘sciences’, and the tendency of our current society to believe in the supremacy of the input-output model of life. This behaviorist model works perfectly for standardized curriculum; but it does not tap the entrepreneurial core that elicits the creativity, commitment, and resourcefulness we want from students.

     

    • Pay close attention to classroom culture. Plants bloom best under the right conditions; so do human beings. Set up norms, not rules. Remember that care, in the form of a positive mentor relationship, respect for individual student aspirations, and a belief in each student’s desire to learn, is your foremost teaching strategy. Be an active, empathetic listener. Model curiosity. Know that you broadcast your feelings to students—and be aware of what you are feeling each day.

     

    • Use the tools of inquiry—and trust the result. Starting with questions, using inquiry, or designing a project around a compelling challenge are great tools. This is the coming mantra of education. But the tools must be accompanied by your belief that valuable learning will come out of the experience that may not fit the standards or address the end of course tests. Yes, prepare students for the tests; that’s your job and your paycheck may depend on it. But plenty of opportunities exist to turn students loose on learning, with good, supportive guidelines that aim them in the direction of the aha! and the revelation. The more you trust your students, the more your students will access their deeper selves and the ultimate source of their success.

     

    Thom Markham is the author of the Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators, and the principal author of the Handbook for Project Based Learning, published by the Buck Institute for Education. Download Tools for PBL on his website, www.thommarkham.com or contact him at thom@thommarkham.com.

     

  • Blog post
  • 9 months ago
  • Views: 1156

• A Primer: Neuroscience and Tea A Primer: Neuroscience and Teaching Strategies

  • From: Judith_Willis
  • Description:

    Judy Willis, M.D. M.Ed.
    jwillisneuro@aol.com
    www.RADTeach.com

                                     A Primer for Use in Teacher Education about the Neuroscience of Learning

     

    Why Teacher Education Should Include Neuroscience
    
          The neuroscience of how the brain learns and what influences the most successful brain acquisition and application of learning should be included in all teacher education programs.  Teachers need to be prepared with foundational knowledge to understand, evaluate, and apply the neuroscience of learning. With this knowledge they will be able to recognize future implications from this rapidly expanding field of research to increase the effectiveness of their teaching and build and sustain students’ joy of learning.
          Teacher education needs to prepare tomorrow’s teachers with the knowledge and tools to prepare their future students for the game-changing realities globalization. The new common core standards align well with the preparation for students need to be prepared with the thinking skills already sought by employers. These skillsets are those described in the neurology literature for almost 100 years, and they remain the brain networks that can be strengthened so all students can participate in the opportunities and challenges in higher education, vocations, a global society.
           Neuroscience is on the vanguard of producing research of increased quality and applicability to education. Functional neuroimaging gives us insight into what circumstances and sensory input most successfully promote the brain’s acquisition of new knowledge. Among those insights is evidence of increased metabolic activity in identifiable networks neural networks when information is encoded into memory, when memories are retrieved, and when executive functions use is associated with increased neural circuit activity in the prefrontal cortex.
           Correlations to neuroscience research have yielded strategies most consistent with brain’s information processing now “visible” with functional neuroimaging. For example, when information is presented in ways that emphasize relationships to existing stored memory, the brain’s own patterning system increases successful memory acquisition.
    Teachers need to understand the why and not just the how of the most effective teaching strategies to have the motivation and positive expectations to best utilize these strategies. These topics include how the brain “pays attention”, encodes new input into working memory, uses neuroplasticity to construct long-term memory, is influenced by stress, and develops its neural networks of executive functions.
           Especially critical is teacher awareness of the vast potentials of neuroplasticity that increases their opportunities to influence the development of their students’ brain networks of executive functions – their highest cognitive skillsets. Teachers with foundational understanding about the neuroscience and cognitive science of how the brain turns input into long-term memory and memory into transferable knowledge, will be the most prepared to guide all students to achieve their highest potentials.
    
                       A Primer about the Neuroscience of Learning
    
         Teachers are the caretakers of the development of students’ highest brain during the years of its most extensive changes. As such, they have the privilege and opportunity to influence the quality and quantity of neuronal and connective pathways so all children leave school with their brains optimized for future success.
    This introduction to the basics of the neuroscience of learning includes information that should be included in all teacher education programs. It is intentionally brief such that it can be taught in a single day of instruction. Ideally there would be additional opportunities for future teachers to pursue further inquiry into the science of how the brain learns, retrieves, and applies information.
    
    Teaching Grows Brain Cells
        IQ is not fixed at birth and brain development and intelligence are “plastic” in that internal and environmental stimuli constantly change the structure and function of neurons and their connections. Teachers have the opportunity to help all children build their brains beyond what was previously believed to be fixed limits based on learning disabilities or the predictions of test scores or achievements.
         It was once believed that brain cell growth stops after age twenty. We now know that through neuroplasticity, interneuron connections (dendrites, synapses, and myelin coating) continue to be pruned or constructed in response to learning and experiences throughout our lives.
         These physical changes of brain self-reconstruction in response to experiences including sensory input, emotions, conscious and unconscious thoughts are so responsive that human potential for increased knowledge, physical skills, and “talent” in the arts is essentially limitless. There are conditions associated with the most successful strengthening of neural networks, such as guided instruction and practice with frequent corrective feedback. As neuroscience research continues more information will be available to guide teachers providing the brain with the experiences best suited to maximize its learning and proficiency.
    
    High Stress Restricts Brain Processing to the Survival State
         The prefrontal cortex, where the higher thinking processes of executive functions (judgment, critical analysis, prioritizing) is also the CEO that can manage and control our emotions. Like the rest of the PFC it is still undergoing maturation throughout the school years. Students do not have the adult brain’s developed circuits of reflection, judgment, and gratification delay to overcome the lower brain’s strong influence.
         Neuroimaging research reveals that a structure in the emotion sensitive limbic system is a switching-station that determines which part of the brain will receive input and determine response output. Brain-based research has demonstrated that new information cannot pass through the amygdala (part of the limbic system) to enter the frontal lobe if the amygdala is in the state of high metabolism or overactivity provoked by anxiety. It is important for teachers to know that when stress cuts off flow to and from the PFC, behavior is involuntary. It is not students’ choice in the reactive state when they “act out” and “zone out”.
         Through interventions to go beyond differentiation to individualization (see article about video game model) it is possible to decrease the stressors of frustration from work perceived as too difficult or boredom from repeated instruction after mastery is achieved. Further information from neuroscience research reveals other causes of the high stress state in school and suggests interventions to reduce the stress blocking response in the amygdala.
    
    Memory is Constructed and Stored by Patterning
    
         The brain turns data from the senses into learned information in the hippocampus. This encoding process requires activation or prior knowledge with a similar “pattern” to physically link with the new input if a short-term memory is to be constructed. The neuroimaging research supported by cognitive testing reveals that the most successful construction of working (short-term) memory takes place when there has been activation of the brain’s related prior knowledge before new information is taught.
          When teachers work to clearly demonstrate the patterns, connections, and relationships that exist between new and old learning (e.g. cross-curricular studies, graphic organizers, spiraled curriculum) the probability of encoding increases.
    Teachers can help students increase working memory efficiency through a variety of interventions correlated with neuroimaging responses. For example, with opportunities to make predictions, receive timely feedback, and reflect on those experiences. These experiences appear to be increase executive function facilitation of working memory, such as guiding the selection of the most important information hold in working memory.
    
    Memory is Sustained by Use
         Once and encoded short-term memory is constructed it still needs to be activated multiple times and ideally in response to a variety of prompts for neuroplasticity to increase its durability. Each time students participate in any endeavor, a certain number of neurons are activated.  When they repeat the action, the same neurons respond again.  The more times they repeat an action, the more dendrites grow and interconnect, resulting in greater memory storage and recall efficiency.
         Retention is further promoted when new memories are connected to other stored memories based on commonalities, such as similarities/differences, especially when students use graphic organizers and derive their own connections. Multisensory instruction, practice, and review promote memory storage in multiple regions of the cortex, based on the type of sensory input by which they were learned and practiced. These are distant storage centers are linked to each other such that triggering one sensory memory activates the others.  This duplication results of storage increases the efficiency of subsequent retrieval as a variety of cues prompt activation of different access points to the extended memory map.
         The construction of concept memory networks requires opportunities for students to transfer learning beyond the contexts in which it is learned and practiced. When information learned and stored in its own isolated circuit it is only accessible by the same stimuli through which it was obtained. These transfer activities activate memories to new stimuli and with other knowledge to solve novel problems. These simultaneous activations promote extended connections among memories that are the larger concept memory networks most applicable to future use.
         Pattern recognition facilitation and opportunities for knowledge transfer extends the brain’s processing efficiency for greater access to and application of its accumulated learning. These teaching interventions will prepare graduates for future incorporation and extension of new information as it is becomes available. Students who have the guided learning experiences needed to construct concept memory networks will be have the best preparation for their futures. As the information pool expands, these students will continue to comprehend new information, consolidate it into their neural networks, and recognize, develop, and globally disseminate its new applications.
    
    The Future
         As the research continues to build, it will be the obligation of those who prepare our future teachers to insure they understand and can apply the best current and future teaching strategies. This includes insuring that the teachers who graduate from their programs have the foundational neuroscience knowledge to use the fruits of the expanding pool of research to the betterment of all their own future students. That is a fascinating and exciting challenge to meet at a pivotal time in the evolution of education.
    
    References
    
    The references used for this article are listed here. The published version of this article required that format. I can provide the specific annotations if needed. In addition, since it was written in 2005, newer research is now available on all topics described and incorporated in the articles I’ve written on these topics in recent rears. Teachers with neuroscience foundational knowledge will be able to seek, evaluate, and apply that subsequent and future research.
    
    Andreasen, E (1999) Human Brain Mapping, 8(4), 226-234. Wiley-Liss, Inc. Iowa City,   Iowa.
    
    Ashby, C. R., Thanos, P. K., Katana, J. M., Michaelides, E. L., Gardner, C. A., Heidbreder, N. D. (1999) The selective dopamine antagonist. Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior.
    
    Christianson, S.A. (1992). Emotional stress and eyewitness memory: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin, 112(2), 284-309).
    
    Chugani H (1998) Biological Basis of Emotions: Brain Systems and Brain Development. Pediatrics 102:1225-1229
    
    Dulay, H. and M. Burt. 1977: "Remarks on creativity in language acquisition". In Viewpoints on English as a second Language. (Ed.) M. Burt , H. Dulay and M. Finocchiaro. New York. Regents.
    
    Introini-Collision, I.Bl, Miyazaki, B., & McGaugh, J.L. (1991). Involvement of the amygdala in the memory-enhancing effects of clenbuterol. Psychopharmacology, 104(4) 541-544.
    
    Kato, N. and McEwen, B. (2003). Neuromechanisms of emotions and memory. Neuroendocrinology. 11,03. 54-58.
    
    Kohn, A., (2004). The Cult of Rigor and the Loss of Joy. Education Week 9/15/04.
         
    Krashen, Steven (1982) "Theory Versus Practice in Language Training" Innovative
    Approaches to Language Teaching, ed. Robert W. Blair. Rowley: Newbury, 1982 p 25-  27.
    
    McGillivray, S. and Castel, A. (2011).Betting on Memory Leads to Metacognitive Improvement by Younger and Older Adults. Psychology and Aging, Vol. 26, No. 1, 137–144.
    
    Pawlak, R., Magarinos, A. M., Melchor, J., McEwen, B., & Strickland, S. (Feb. 2003). Tissue plasminogen activator in the amygdala is critical for stress-induced anxiety-like behavior. Nature Neuroscience, 168 – 174.
    
    Shadmehr, R., and Holcomb,H (1997). Neural correlates of motor memory consolidation," Science 277:821
    
    Sowell, E. R., Peterson, B. S., Thompson, P. M. (2003) Mapping cortical change across the human life span. Nature Neuroscience 6, 309-315.
    
    Wunderlich, K. et. al., (2005). Improving Learning Through Understanding of Brain Science Research. Learning Abstracts, Volume 8, Number 1. 41-43.
    
    
    
    
    
    

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 2185

• The Whole Child is a Smarter C The Whole Child is a Smarter Child

  • From: Thom_Markham
  • Description:

    As I’ve reported in the past, IQ scores are on the move, rising nearly ten points with each generation. Known as the Flynn effect, after James Flynn, a cognitive scientist, the reason behind the rise in scores is widely debated, but answers focus on one area that should be of interest to teachers: Scores are increasing because children are showing greater capacity for fluid intelligence. That’s the ability to see patterns and solve novel problems without prior information, which relies on better working memory (the capacity to manipulate information) and a longer attention span. Intelligence researchers consider fluid intelligence to be the ultimate cognitive ability—a kind of gold standard for smart. Until a few years ago, fluid intelligence was considered immutable, but research in 2008, using computer programs, showed that it may be improved through training.

     

    The fall out from the research was predictable: Brain boosting software flooded the market. In our data driven, analytic, brain-centric society, the enhanced ability to count and remember squares on a screen was seen as a competitive edge.

     

    But I suggest that teachers approach fluid intelligence differently. First, don’t be fooled into thinking the brain alone is at work here. The brain is not an isolated cognitive organ whose neuronal pathways and exact mechanisms for problem solving have been identified, or whose mysterious interactions between emotions and a conscious thought have been parsed. Neuroscientists themselves caution us not be overconfident about applying brain science to the classroom.

     

    Second, don’t be misled by IQ results. Another significant reason that IQ scores are rising is that formal schooling teaches students to categorize objects, which helps them on IQ tests. In 1900, for example, an IQ test might have asked about the relationship between rabbits and dogs. The correct answer: Dogs chase rabbits. Today’s correct answer? Both dogs and rabbits are mammals.

     

    This leads to a culturally self-fulfilling prophecy: You have to go to school and learn facts in order to be considered smart. Richard Nisbett sets this standard in his book Intelligence and How to Get It, stating that, “Without formal education, a person is simply not going to be very bright—whether we measure intelligence by IQ tests or any other metric.” Sorry, natives of the rain forest.

     

    Rather than a hyper focus on the brain and IQ, I believe we should put our faith in a multi-faceted, holistic approach that respects and enlarges human capacity, so that fluid intelligence includes the ability to create, empathize, and solve the issues of a divided global world. It’s quite possible, in fact, that fluid intelligence flourishes in a whole child environment, and that—in the 21^st century—the whole child is a smarter child. It tells us also that, with contributions from all of us, we can make children smarter. My ten point action plan:

     

    Take charge of your teaching. In my last post, I advocated for teacher empowerment. Fluid intelligence requires a fluid environment, like moving waters seeking a new outlet. Rather than remain a pawn of a top down system, use your own creative and visionary ability to move your teaching and school forward. Students will respond by ‘feeling’ the shift and acting more intelligently.

     

    Pose questions, not answers. Teaching to the test stops fluid intelligence in its tracks. By definition, the highest form of smart is the ability to question, see gaps in patterns, solve problems and create ideas. Either we teach young people to do this, or our civilization will wither. The choice is that stark.

     

    Stay focused on the future. The new indicators of smart use the language of the future: Resiliency; empathy, collaboration; communication; creativity; ethics; and character. These are difficult to teach, but can be learned by students when teachers make these habits and skills important.

     

    Practice the power of care. Know the basics of why small people become good big people: They feel loved. A recent news item detailed how a Missouri kindergarten teacher required a six-year old to sit in her pooped pants while the rest of the class took a test. The rationale? The teacher was preparing her for the rigors of state testing in the future. Enough said.

     

    Start with the heart. The heart and brain work in an intimate partnership. In simple terms, this means that all successful learning begins with emotional safety. Take time to create a climate of safety, belonging, and transparency in your class.

     

    Learn about the brain. Most teachers know remarkably little about the chief tool of their trade. It’s important to know about advances in neuroscience, as well as the current limitations of neuroscience. Mostly, learn about the frontal lobes. That’s where most of your words are processed by your students.

     

    Tap collective intelligence. No more than anyone else do I understand world trends, but one fact is clear: people are now woven into a web of intelligence. They get smarter because other people help them get smarter. Our job as educators is to figure out why this happens, how to make it happen faster and better, and how to direct it for positive results. We can begin by teaching students to work in highly committed teams focused on deep, productive work.

     

    Dive into creativity. A very recent study reported that only 25% of people thought they lived up to their creative potential. One major factor? They were not encouraged to develop their creativity in school. Yet creativity is the highest expression of fluid intelligence. Two useful tools: Use creativity rubrics and designate one column in other rubrics for ‘breakthrough’ thinking.

     

    Be a coach. Whether you feel comfortable with student-centered learning or not, it’s day is here. The role of the modern teacher is still to convey information as appropriate and necessary, but that skill set must now be expanded to include coaching and mentoring. Intelligence can’t be taught; neither is it a fixed commodity. Somewhere in between is your role as a supporting adult who guides and instructs in a way that stimulates a young person to grapple with life in a way that kindles the growth of intelligence.

     

    Model intelligence. What if fluid intelligence is increased by good modeling? Are you a good model? Are you whole and healthy? Do you convey curiosity, joy, an open attitude, and commitment to your own growth? As a test, how would you answer the question about dogs and rabbits? Are they just mammals, or do they represent two beautiful and amazing species in an amazing world that’s getting better by the day—because we’re all getting smarter?

     

    Thom Markham is a psychologist and educational consultant. He is the author of the Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators, and the principal author of the Handbook for Project Based Learning, published by the Buck Institute for Education. Download Tools for PBL on his website, www.thommarkham.com or contact him at thom@thommarkham.com.

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 749

• TEDx Video Dr. Judy Willis Feb TEDx Video Dr. Judy Willis Feb 1, 2012 PART 2

  • From: Judith_Willis
  • Description:

    TEDx Video Dr. Judy Willis Feb 1, 2012 http://bit.ly/wlxLIC

    Topic “From Neuroscience Lab to the Classroom” TEDxEnola

    

  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 65
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• Judy Willis Edutipia Blog Thre Judy Willis Edutipia Blog Three Strategies for Using the Arts to Build Student Executive Functions (Part 5 of 7)

  • From: Judith_Willis
  • Description:

    
    edutopia staff blog by Dr Judy Willis
    Three Strategies for Using the Arts to Build Student Executive Functions (Part 5 of 7) http://bit.ly/xFnJO8
    
    Before information can be processed through executive functions, it must reach the prefrontal cortex (PFC), where higher order thinking occurs. The pathway to the PFC has potential roadblocks in the form of an information intake filter and an emotional switching station that determines if input reaches the PFC or is diverted to the lower, reactive brain. Embedding the arts into instruction and assessment promotes flow through these filters, builds growth mindset, and strengthens the actively developing executive functions.
    
    1) The Arts Get Past the Brain's Attention Filter to Promote and Sustain Attention
    All learning enters the brain as sensory input, but not all sensory input is allowed in through the brain's attention filter. The brain admits only about one percent of the sensory input available to it each second. It therefore behooves teachers to be sure their instruction "makes the cut."
    
    This involuntary filter is in the low brainstem, and is called the reticular activating system (RAS). It gives priority to novel, unusual, curious sensory information. Listening to lectures and doing drills and worksheets are not novel or curiosity-evoking sensory experiences. That said, you can still snag students' attention by incorporating the types of sensory input that is favored for RAS selection. Here are ways you can incorporate some of the stimuli that get priority admission to the brain:
    •    Use color
    •    Use movement (through your own actions and with students)
    •    Incorporate music
    •    Incorporate changes in your voice
    •    Include curious objects
    •    Create positive anticipation of an activity that has previously been associated with pleasure
    
    Strategy 1 in the Classroom
    You've seen professional speakers engage an audience by starting off with humor or a question that promotes curiosity. Starting a lesson with something to immediately engage students is equally important. You can promote attentive intake with curious or compelling photographs, drawings, music, video clips of scenes of from theatrical productions, or by reading a book using different voices for different characters. Once the intake filter opens to your novel, unusual or curious sensory information, it is likely that the academic information following and relating to these openings will be "selected" by this involuntary attention filter.
    
    2) Use the Arts to Advertise, Build Curiosity and Predict in Advance
    There are some standards or units of instruction to which students are particularly resistant, especially when their previous experiences with the topics have been negative.
    
    When these units of instruction are coming up, curiosity promoting art, photos, objects, paintings, etc. previewed in the weeks or days leading up to the unit can promote interest as students predict what might be coming.
    You can prime student interest by using the research from the billion dollar advertising industry to increase the likelihood that their intake filters will select the sensory input of coming unit. Build anticipation and interest with visual arts as "coming attraction" hints.
    
    Strategy 2 in the Classroom
    You can reveal new parts of a covered poster, photograph or other curiosity-building symbolic representation every few days leading up to the unit as students enjoy making and changing their predictions as they interpret new clues.
    
    3) Make Sure You Get Through the Emotional Filter to the PFC
    As I have written before, a low stress, positive emotional climate is needed to open the pathways to the prefrontal cortex and ignite the most powerful neural networks therein.
    The amygdala is a switching station deep in the brain's emotional limbic system that determines if information will be conducted to the higher PFC where long-term retrievable memories are developed, or to the lower brain that "reacts" but does not "learn." When stress is high, the increased metabolic activity in the amygdala directs incoming information down to the lower brain.
    
    Boredom and frustration, when sustained or frequent, are stressors that promote the amygdala's hypermetabolic state and block input to the executive functions housed in the prefrontal cortex. Similarly, when input does not reach the PFC and its emotional control centers, the reactive lower brain will control behavior output. The involuntary reactive behavior outputs are then limited to those of animals when they perceive possible threat: fight/flight/freeze in the wild -- acting out or zoning out in class.
    
    The arts can reduce the stressors of boredom or frustration and help rebuild a growth mindset for students with a history of frequent academic failures. Because most children have experienced pleasure from the arts, either from active creative participation or pleasurable listening or viewing, incorporating these sources of past pleasure in a lesson reduces the brain's need for find its own engagement by the self-stimulation of "acting out," such as disturbing classmates or defacing desks and books, or the internal self-stimulation provided by their imaginations that gives the appearance of "zoning out."
    
    Indeed, we've all seen students act out (or zone out) while passively listening to classmates' reports or during a shared, whole-class reading. This is the behavior of all mammal brains when there is sustained boredom or frustration.
    
    To promote engagement and effort, students need early opportunities to find personal pleasure and relevance in the material they must learn.
    
    Strategy 3 in the Classroom
    Creating art, instrumental music, dance moves or skits can be strong strategies to teach with engagement and can promote memory and executive function across the curriculum, such as fractions, patterns in science cycles, or historical and literature time/event progressions.
    
    You can promote increased attention by giving students the opportunity to create personal representations of the material they're hearing. One example would be to have them sketch while listening, creating visual representations of the content. Instead of passive inattention (and the associated behavioral problems and failure to make memory links), making diagrams, mindmaps and other symbolic representations will focus active listening and the greater likelihood of memory links.
    Preparation Note: As with all new approaches, students may need guided practice, models, frequent formative assessment and guiding feedback when these alternatives are used in place of traditional note-taking, particularly when the information includes important content knowledge and critical foundational information.
    Children's brains need to acquire memory associations that link pleasure with learning. The creative arts can provide this link through associations with the pleasures of creative experiences enjoyed during early childhood.
    In my next blog, I will cover the arts and the neuroscience of joyful learning.
    

    Previous blogs in this series
    •    Introduction and Overview: Understanding How the Brain Thinks by Judy Willis MD
    •    Part One: Understanding How the Brain Thinks by Judy Willis MD
    •    Part Two: The Brain-Based Benefits of Writing for Math and Science Learning by Judy Willis MD
    •    Part Three: Improving Executive Function: Teaching Challenges and Opportunities by Judy Willis MD
    •    Part Four: Three Brain-based Teaching Strategies to Build Executive Function in Students by Judy Willis MD
    
    

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 665

• What brain apps have you added What brain apps have you added recently?

  • From: Melissa_Edwards
  • Description:

    When I started reading Now You See It: how the brain science of attention will transform the way we love, work, and learn by Cathy Davidson, I was reading it as a requirement for a class. As I read more (and underlined, starred, highlighted, and circled more), I realized that my purpose and motivation for reading the book had changed .... I was reading the book because I really wanted to and was interested in the information being shared.

    
    Six days after my sixteenth birthday, I was involved in a serious car crash and sustained a traumatic brain injury (a left-side closed brain injury). As a result of my brain injury, I had to relearn just about everything ... I don't remember when I relearned to roll over, sit up, and eat but my parents have some interesting stories. I do remember relearning to walk, run, read, reason ... I am very blessed to have recovered, accomplished all that I have done, and be where I am today. Because of my past experiences, I enjoy learning about the brain and learning, so the title of this book immediately caught my attention.
    
    "The way we think about the brain has a lot to do with the technology of this era" (pg 14). 
    
    One of the many things in the book that caught my attention was the comparison of the brain to an iPhone which was based on contemporary neuroscience (pg 14). The iPhone apps which are selected, downloaded, and deleted represent the things we pay attention to and are interested in. As a person's interests change, so do the apps on his or her iPhone. In many ways, the brain is similar since "how we use our brain (what we pay attention to) changes our brain. Those things that capture our attention -- our learning and our work, our passions and our activities -- change our actual brain biology" (pg 15).
    
    Take a moment to think about some of the topics you are really interested in ....
    Think about how much you know about that topic.
    
    My husband enjoys designing and building furniture. He can tell you more than you would want to know about types of joints, tools, and wood. Did you know thatpurpleheart wood is an exotic wood that does not look purple until it is cut and exposed to the sun? That type of wood becomes a darker shade of purple over time. (We have a small table made from it in our house)
    
    Think about the people you know that enjoy basketball, baseball, football, and even Nascar racing .... they know all sorts of numbers, stats, records, and names because that interests them. I guess in terms of "iPhone thinking" those are the different apps they have added to their brains. I don't know stats and history of wood and those activities since those are not topics that interest me, so I have not added those apps to my brain.
    
    I can share information with you about colors, learning styles, blogs, and children's authors ... those are things that interest me. I used to be able to share lots of information about scrapbooking but since I am not as involved with that hobby now, I guess that "brain app" is not being refreshed on a regular basis so the information is not a prominent.
    
    I know we say that as teachers, we need to find ways to appeal to student interest to make more connections for learning. We need to working on ways to encourage, support, and refresh the learning apps in our students.
    
    I don't have an iPhone, but thinking of the brain as a place to add, refine, and even delete apps based on interests and needs makes some sense.
    
    So what brain apps have you added recently? Are there some that need refreshing? 

    photo source

  • Blog post
  • 2 years ago
  • Views: 855
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• Understanding by Design Meets Understanding by Design Meets Neuroscience Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed.

  • From: Judith_Willis
  • Description:

                       Understanding by Design Meets Neuroscience

                                     Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed.
    
    Consider the Best Computer Game Model: In the most compelling computer games, think about what the player gets after working through the challenges of each successive level. When they succeed at mastering the skills of the new level, they don’t get prizes, money, hugs, or teacher approval. They get recognition of their incremental progress by being promoted to the next level of play – which is actually MORE CHALLENGING WORK! These game attributes, applied to teaching, can have the same motivating and successful effects on learners.

    What makes computer games so captivating? The successful computer games promote goal orientation, perseverance (even after failure), scaffolding when needed, clear tasks, opportunities to practice, and recognize one’s own incremental goal progress. The best games are broken up into levels.  Reaching the next levels provide opportunities for players to recognize their progress on their way to the final game goal. 

    Achievable Challenge. The most popular computer games provide increasingly challenging levels as players become more and more skillful. As skill improves, the next challenge is at again at an appropriate level of achievable challenge that the player can reach with practice, effort, and perseverance. This game model correlates to using achievable challenge, motivating goals, & feedback about incremental progress in the classroom, with the scaffolding provided for support, as students are motivated to strategically build mastery.
    
    Collaboration of Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, and Education   
      The confidence base is established when students know that they will have access to the tools and support they need to reach the high expectations differentiated for them. These are the classrooms where the bar does not need to be lowered or challenge eliminated in the name of access. Achievable challenge set students on appropriately challenging paths increases maximum brain engagement. The extra planning time is rewarded by increased student engagement such that less time needed for behavior management and students have increased motivation to participate in class and on homework.

    The additional brain-memory bonus, as I’ve written about previously, is the dopamine-reward cycle activation where students’ pleasure-reward response responds to more frequent opportunities to recognize their own incremental goal progress. In addition of this perseverance promoting effect of dopamine released by intrinsic motivation, students develop the concept that effort does bring goal progress, and regardless of past experiences, they can succeed with effort and opportunities to get the support and tools they need to promote their success.

    Achievable challenge set students on appropriately challenging paths increases maximum brain engagement. The extra planning time is rewarded by increased student engagement such that less time needed for behavior management and students have increased motivation to participate in class and on homework. The additional brain-memory bonus, as I’ve written about previously, is the dopamine-reward cycle activation where students’ pleasure-reward response responds to more frequent opportunities to recognize their own incremental goal progress. In addition of this perseverance promoting effect of dopamine released by intrinsic motivation, students develop the concept that effort does bring goal progress, and regardless of past experiences, they can succeed with effort and opportunities to get the support and tools they need to promote their success.
    
     

      Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, and Education: UbD for Neuro-logical Planning and Instruction

    
       When I recognized the compatibility of the computer game model with the correlations of my area of specialization as a neurologist, and later during my ten years of teaching elementary and middle school, I sought models though which the computer game model could be best applied to curriculum and assessment planning as well as to classroom instruction. I found was the work of Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins in their Understanding by Design (UbD) and Planning by Design books provides a wealth of information for planning, assessment, and instruction. My references to UbD in this article are to aspects particularly relevant to the computer game model including: a curriculum and assessment model that includes backward planning starting with goals as “big ideas” and “essential questions”, advance planning of formative and summative assessments with ongoing student feedback and teacher feedback, authentic performance tasks as assessments that teach and motivate, and transfer of learning to new domains. 

    Achievable Challenge and Student Awareness of Incremental Progress: Successful curriculum, assessment, and goal planning are required for the video game model (dopamine-reward system) to work its magic. The UbD model sets up information delivery and output goals that are ideal for the patterning, prediction, and pleasure systems that drive and guide the brain.     

     Research has given us increasing understanding of what sensory input has the greatest likelihood of passing through the brain’s attention and emotional filters to reach the highest emotional and intellectual control centers in the prefrontal cortex. We know more and more about what it takes to retain that new input, first in working memory then in long-term and extended conceptual memory.     

     We have the guidance of further research supporting the “packaging” and “output goals” that promote the brain’s most efficient internal drives and organization. The UbD system is ideal for the brain’s structure and function by incorporating core concepts into meaningful and authentic contexts and including opportunities to “play the game while building the skills” as students apply learning throughout the acquisition process.     

     The likelihood of information being maintained in long-term memory increases when students’ brains are prepared in advance to “catch” the new input. This requires that we confirm that students’ foundational knowledge is accurate and then use strategies to activate the memory circuits of prior knowledge to which new input can physically link to construct working memory. Without this preactivation, there is nothing to which new input can link and new learning, failing to consolidate with an existing circuit, is not retained.    

     To prepare students for the dopamine-reward system that sustains motivation and memory through incremental goal progress, we need to preassess and correct faulty foundational knowledge, activate prior knowledge, and sustain the incremental progress awareness through ongoing formative assessments and feedback. This involves differentiation and individualization with scaffolding to customize the learning process for students’ levels of achievable challenge. Then, with opportunities to apply and transfer learning through enjoyable and personally relevant activities, students reach that video game model state in which they want to learn what they have to learn.      

    For the two years, I have had the privilege of collaborating with Jay McTighe. One area of our focus is curriculum planning and instructional strategies that incorporate the computer game model’s dopamine-reward system, fueled by the intrinsic motivation of incremental progress recognition. Our work together has further convinced me that achievable challenges are promoted when student interest is developed and teachers communicate high expectations while insuring that students have the support and scaffolding needed to achieve the challenges.    

     The component of incremental progress requires clearly structured and motivating goals that are made evident to the students from the beginning. Transparent expectations are also part of UbD planning, as students know the goals and assessments in advance. The recognition of incremental progress is supported by the authentic assessments and frequent feedback about goal progress throughout the unit (instead of their receiving feedback only by summative test scores of rote memory at the end of units). The clarity and student-desirability of unit goals is what the brain needs to best use its pattern-seeking design to construct and expand memory stored in relational networks.     

     With input now having a “big idea” or “essential question” on which to link, patterning activities can strengthen links and extend relational memory networks. These activities need to continue to appeal to the brain’s prediction, pattern, and pleasure seeking. As in the video game process where players use trial and error, inductive reasoning, instructive feedback from the game, and even read the manual to reach their goals, students will do the same when they value the mental manipulations (such as the authentic performance tasks in UbD) and available resources as tools to reach their desired goals. The same is true with corrective feedback and direct instruction during a unit if students’ brains directly link this input with the goals they seek.     

     The key is to develop desirable goals, provide individual students the paths to progress that suit their levels of achievable challenge, then to provide them with frequent opportunities to recognize their individual incremental goal progress. These students not only benefit from the intrinsic satisfaction of the dopamine-reward response to their incremental progress (as the video game player does to getting to the next level), but they also change their brains. 

         

    Neuroplasticity is the process through which the brain sustains learning in long-term memory and links related memory circuits together as conceptual knowledge. Each time a memory circuit is activated, electricity that flows through it fuels neuroplastic construction (dendrites, synapses, myelination of axons). This circuit activation is most effective when students are motivated by personally relevant performance tasks and opportunities for authentic transfer activities throughout the learning process.             

    It has long been the goal of education to provide students with skills and knowledge to serve them beyond the classroom and the habits of mind that sustain lifelong learning. Now this goal is even more critical as much of the information and technology that will be available to today’s students when they graduate is not even here now. Fortunately, we have the correlations from neuroscience and cognitive science to guide us in designing learning experiences to promote the construction of long-term, conceptual memory and the circuits of executive functions that will serve our students beyond graduation.       

    From clear goals as the “packaging” for successful brain intake, to authentic performance tasks for mental manipulation, and transfer opportunities to apply learning in ways beyond those in which it was acquired and practiced, we have tools to promote learning consistent with the brain’s most powerful neural processing. Despite the unrealistic demands of an over-packed curriculum, the convergence of neuroscience and cognitive science, advances in curriculum planning, assessment quality, and instructional strategies can engage the brain as powerfully as the best video game. We have the tools to plan instruction with the packaging of information input and clarity of goal-directed output that aligns with and IGNITE our students’ brains’ most successful processing now and in the future.

    Copyright © 2011 by Judy Willis 

    Dr. Judy Willis, a board-certified neurologist and middle school teacher in Santa Barbara, California, attended UCLA School of Medicine, where she remained as a resident and ultimately became chief resident in neurology. She practiced neurology for 15 years, and then received a credential and master's degree in education from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has taught in elementary, middle, and graduate schools; and provides professional development presentations and workshops nationally and internationally about learning and the brain. Her website is www.RADTeach.com
    
     
     
     
    

  • Blog post
  • 2 years ago
  • Views: 2131

• Why Writing Is Crucial to STEM Why Writing Is Crucial to STEM

  • From: Judith_Willis
  • Description:

    Science and math are vital to our progress, yet our test scores on the international scales are not keeping pace globally. The US Department of Labor has projected that by 2014 there will be more than two million job openings in science, technology, and engineering, but according to the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) international test score report, the US is lagging behind countries like Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Finland in STEM subjects. H.G. Wells cautioned, "Civilization is a race between disaster and education." and it seems the government is heeding that advice with initiatives in motion to increase emphasis on these subjects.

     

    As STEM subjects get more emphasis, writing and the arts cannot become victims of that emphasis. It is also important not to narrow the focus to the rote memory test and to recognize the interdependence of science and math on a fully rounded curriculum. As we strive for students to develop creativity as innovators in STEM and all fields, it behooves us to consider the value of writing and the arts toward the achievement of these goals.

     

    In the past two decades, neuroscience and cognitive science research have provided increasing evidence correlating creativity with academic, social, and emotional intelligence. We also know more about the neural processing of the brain’s highest executive functions that direct judgment, critical analysis, emotional control, creative problem solving, highest cognition, and other skillsets, which are becoming increasingly valuable for all students, and essential for those who enter the STEM fields in 21st century.

     

    Writing for the Math and Science Literacy

    As I’ve previously written about the value of embedding the arts throughout the curriculum (http://whatworks.wholechildeducation.org/blog/art-for-joyful-learning/ ) the focus of this article is to describe how writing can enhance the brain’s intake, processing, retaining, and retrieving of information in science and math.

     

    Writing brings more that literacy and communication advantages to STEM studies, and all academic pursuits. Through writing, students can increase their comfort with and success in understanding complex material, especially when the subject has unfamiliar concepts and subject specific vocabulary. Writing throughout the curriculum also increases the power of a literate nation to “read, compute, investigate, and innovate” and to participate more successfully in our democracy.

     

    Writing: Just What the Doctor Orders for the Brain’s Successful Information Processing
    In terms of writing and the brain, there are multiple reasons for embedding writing throughout STEM courses. Writing promotes the brain’s attentive focus to class work and homework, promotes long-term memory, illuminates patterns (possibly even “aha” moment insight!), includes all students as participants, gives the brain time for reflection, and when well-guided, is a source of conceptual development and stimulus of the brain’s highest cognition.

     

    There is an involuntary information intake filter that determines what sensory input is accepted into the brain. Input must also pass through an emotional filter, the amygdala, where the destination of that information. When stress is high, the intake filter favors information selectively admits information related to perceived threat, virtually ignoring other sensory input. The high stress state also directs the amygdala switching station to conduct information to the lower, reactive brain, where long-term retrievable memories cannot be formed. In addition, the behavioral outputs of the lower brain are limited to fight (act out), flight (self-entertainment sometimes interpreted as ADHD), or freeze (zone out).

     

    Fear of making mistakes in front of classmates is one of the greatest sources of anxiety for students. Writing is an opportunity to lower threat and to reduce the stress that blocks passage through the amygdala to the reflective prefrontal cortex. Descriptive written responses to math or science questions and written predictions, hypotheses, and questions provides all students with the opportunity to actively participate in learning, receive timely feedback, reflect, revise, and risk making mistakes as they build confidence, reveal gaps in foundational knowledge, share creative insights, and build their capacities to communicate of their ideas and defend their opinions.

     

    Writing can include individual journaling, formal research-style formatted reports of student experimentation and data analysis, newspaper editorials about the evidence for environmental problems and a plan for intervention. Writing can be shared with varying degrees of scaffolding for students who need to build confidence, such as class blogs or WIKIs with code names known only by the teacher. Writing done at home, without time constraint and with access to the Internet and other resources, can lower the barriers, but not the bar. Students can then participate more confidently in class starting with reading their written responses, perhaps after the confidence-building of first sharing them with a partner.

     

    Written peer feedback on class WIKIs or blogs offers the opportunity to reflect on the day’s learning, ask questions, or demonstrate accountability for the night’s homework to increase whole class level of preparation for the next day’s instruction. Through these shared written responses about content and concept students have opportunities to express creative hypotheses, alternative perspectives, and concerns about their understanding, with the low-risk option of peer anonymity. There is accountability and peer interaction, without the concern about mistakes that is so paralyzing to many students during class time, and as students consider and define in writing their opinions, conclusions, and predictions, their brains construct concept networks.

     

    When learning is examined through shared writing, students are exposed to multiple approaches to solving problems (so important in building the flexibility and open-minded approach to other cultures as the science, math, and technology world is indeed global) and have the chance to communicate using their own words. They build communication skills they will surely use in their collaborations now and in the future science and math communities they will enter.

     

    I will be posting more in the coming weeks about the importance of writing in STEM subjects. You can also pick up a copy of my recent book, Learning to Love Math: Teaching Strategies That Change Student Attitudes and Get Results in the ASCD Store.

  • Blog post
  • 2 years ago
  • Views: 4391

• The Myth of IQ The Myth of IQ

  • From: Thom_Markham
  • Description:

    On a recent plane trip, I sat next to a hip young man, about 20 years old with an earring and an iPod, who was doing something that many young people don’t. He was reading a serious book on politics and history. Ever on the lookout for success stories, I struck up a conversation about his education. Turns out, his account of how he educated himself caused me to wonder, again: Do schools help students master intelligent behaviors that lead to success in life? Or not?

    Here’s the thumbnail: After spending two years at a community college, the young man had just won a prestigious, full-ride Regents scholarship to the University of California at Irvine. Attending a two-year college out of high school had been his choice, he told me. Each of his three older siblings had graduated with 4.3 grade point averages from his highly regarded suburban high school—and he noticed that they all ended up hating high school. Too focused on grades, they felt stressed and time pressured. And, in an ironic twist, his sister was not accepted by the college of her choice because she hadn’t participated in extracurricular activities. He also told me that earning a 4.3 G.P.A. wasn’t a motivating challenge for him. “It’s easy enough to get good grades in high school,” he shrugged. “You just study all the time and don’t do anything else.”

    His decision from 9^th grade on? Focus on subjects that were meaningful to him; use the time saved for life-enhancing electives; become skillful rather than grub for grades. As a result, he turned his success in high school drama into a communications major at the community college, which he chose because of a strong connection to a supportive mentor there. Two years of stellar performance on the college debate team earned him the scholarship—a successful outcome by any measure.  

    He also proved in important point: Intelligent behavior is more important than an IQ score. In other blogs, I’ve noted that intelligence is generally regarded as an innate, crystallized ability that is determined at birth and never changes. This outdated, ‘cognitive capsule’ view of intelligence has spawned the current educational focus on fixed capacity and retention of information, as measured through high-stakes testing. This view of intelligence also leads to student stratification. On a recent trip to Texas, I learned that the schools there use standardized measures to identify ‘gifted’ children at the age of five, setting in motion 12 years of special attention, while other students remain categorized as ‘low’ or ‘middle’ achievers by the school system.

    It’s important to know that the ‘fixed’ view is outdated and not supported by research. Between 1947 and 2001, U.S. students added a mysterious 17 points to their IQ test scores—an unforeseen surge that scientists cannot explain and a trend that shows signs of accelerating in this decade. Further, due to advances in our understanding of personality, creativity, emotional intelligence, neuroscience, and social dynamics, the entire field of intelligence is now in disarray. Most experts now grope for a more dynamic definition of intelligence that incorporates native ability, environmental influences, and personality into a holistic understanding of how people behave intelligently.

    Should educators be doing the same? I think so. As noted psychologist Robert Sternberg says, “In a world so beset with problems, perhaps the most important thing to understand is not the intelligence of people, but how they use it.” But if we truly want to encourage intelligent behavior in schools—to prepare students for a world that demands that they make informed choices, manage uncertainty, and live by entrepreneurial norms—then we need to do more than simply abandon the old model of intelligence. In fact, I believe that preparing students to act intelligently requires educators to think through a number of issues.

    Consider these implications:

    Intelligent behavior is not amenable to reward and punishment. Rather, students now ask: Is this worth doing? Intelligent behavior draws students naturally to authentic tasks that contain meaning. That means educators must find a new balance between constructivism and accountability—between creative tasks and information. Bottom line, students need to be freed from the constraints of a rigid, fact-filled day and offered flexible opportunities to pursue learning.     

    Intelligent behavior is mediated by personality; it is not an innate reflex. Mood, outlook, experience, goals, and communication style all impact behavior. The trend toward personalized and differentiated instruction reflects what teachers know: a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to learning does not really work. And, the more we personalize, the more difficult it becomes to standardize. This conflict lies at the heart of discussions about the future of education. How do we create multiple pathways for inquiry and innovation—which are necessary to appeal to the broad range of talents and interests in today’s youth—while still teaching a core curriculum?

    Intelligent behavior is highly related to self-efficacy. Students will ask: Can I succeed at this? As I have stated before, rigor should no longer be defined by the ‘hardness’ of work, but instead should represent a standard for students’ practical, adaptive skills and their habits of mind. But personal mastery does not occur through lectures and testing—it happens through practice and feedback, with the teacher as a supportive mentor. In essence, if educators want to have students learn intelligent behaviors, they must become facilitators of learning—a big change from grading essays.

    Intelligent behavior is a whole body exercise. Seminal research by psychologists and neuroscientists tells us that motivation, perception, effort, and engagement—all central to intelligent behavior—do not arise solely in the brain. As data correlating school climate and academic achievement show, emotions and the environment impact cognition in powerful ways, both negatively and positively. If we want to promote intelligent behavior, we need to incorporate emotional intelligence into the mainstream of the school day. For starters, it’s time to let go of the outdated distinction between cognitive and affective learning. Here, I’d like to plug the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) for their relentless focus on whole child education. In the face of the current testing mania, it’s brave. It’s also right, in the sense that whole child education produces far more capable young people.

    To my mind, the issues around intelligence rise above simple arguments over educational philosophy. I believe emphasizing a narrow form of intelligence makes our children less smart, in the sense that they become less capable of solving problems and using what they know. It’s actually a squandering of human capital that the world can ill-afford. In fact, since most parents know their child adds up to much more than a single number called an IQ score, I wouldn’t be surprised to see parents advocating soon for a broader view of intelligence. And one day, the right not to have your child slotted into a niche by the educational system may be considered a civil right. We’ll see.

    Just to let you know, my young friend on the plane surprised me at the end of our conversation. How did he plan to use his debate skills? Well, he thought he might go into real estate management. I probed a bit, and it was clear his success and range of skills had given him a kind of confidence to try something entirely new—a worthy trait in today’s world. He knew how to manage money, he said, and now he wanted to manage someone else’s. He told me this with poise and authority—very intelligent behaviors.

     

  • Blog post
  • 2 years ago
  • Views: 1362

• ASCD 2011: A pre-service teach ASCD 2011: A pre-service teacher's professional bar-mitzvah

  • From: Mark_Pepitone
  • Description:

    This was the first I've ever attended the annual ASCD conference. I have been fortunate in that my University paid for my registration and gave us a stipend to help cover travel expenses. Today is the end of the 2nd of 3 days of attending the conference and I can honestly say that this has been an incredibly enriching experience.

    Of course the general sessions were spectacular, and a few of the sessions I attended were also very interesting, but I never expected what would be the most influential part of this conference-- the people. As I am continuing to finish my MAT, I do not have much interaction with working educators in the K-12 field other than those who somehow control what grade I receive. It has been great getting to chat with other teachers, administrators, and fellow students about many of the subjects that I am passionate about.

    One particularly great experience I had today was at the "UbD Meets Neuroscience" presented by Jay McTighe & Judy Willis. I had just read McTighe's book for a class last term and had actually seen Willis present a little more than a year ago at my university. It was great to see these two foundational leaders of education team up to help me re-learn and solidify the importance of Backwards Design & Neurology upon my pedagogy. However, it was interesting that those around me-- principals, state-level officials, and an English teacher-- were very new and unsure with these concepts. I was the leader of terminology, explaining how information is processed neurologically and how Backwards Design works, and it was the State-level official that commented on how wonderful it is that Pre-Service programs are teaching these important and useful ideas to us and how interesting it was that 10, 20, & even 30-year veterans within the field were just now learning about these things. He at once uplifted me because for once i felt that I am a professional while also making me feel like a leader within education-- even though I am not even certified yet. It was a powerful and reaffirming experience, perhaps the first time that I felt confident that I had become a professional educator.

    Today, I am an educator. Not just an educator, but a educational leader. It gives me tingles to think about.

     

  • Blog post
  • 2 years ago
  • Views: 473

• Intelligence: A Great Mystery Intelligence: A Great Mystery

  • From: Thom_Markham
  • Description:

    My earliest years of high school teaching were spent in a student support class working with what I called the artists, rebels, and misfits. Included in this group, as a sort of flag bearer, was a boy named Cory, a big, tough 15-year-old with a keen look in his eye. I liked him immediately, but he had a reputation that was probably deserved. If there was a fight in the hallway, Cory was usually there—and he seemed to have something to do with it. But the assistant principal never could gain a conviction. Somewhere back in elementary school, Cory had mastered plausible denial.

    In his first year of high school, Cory failed nearly every class, and by his sophomore year, he was completely disengaged. However, in the middle of tenth grade, something caught my eye: Cory always carried a wad of cash in his pocket, usually amounting to more than a hundred dollars. The assistant principal said it was drug money. But I asked Cory about it one day, and he had a surprising explanation: He was the acclaimed master mechanic in his neighborhood. He fixed cars and motorcycles for friends and neighbors—and they paid him in cash. 

    As the year went on and I gained his trust, Cory also confided to me the reason for his academic failures: he couldn’t read. This was a source of embarrassment to him, a secret from his parents, and the reason he did poorly in school. He and I took on the challenge, embarking on a program to help him pass his GED. Ultimately, he didn’t pass the test. But, in the end, he went on to achieve great success—and he taught me a vital lesson: to question my assumptions about intelligence. 

    Here’s what happened. Discouraged and angry, in his junior year Cory quit high school and enrolled in a race car mechanics course at a nationally known speedway. It was a big leap—at 17 he became the youngest member of a contingent of aspiring mechanics whose average age was 30. But Cory finished first in his class. Along the way he appeared regularly on ESPN with several of the winning drivers of his cars. Upon completing the 18-week course, he received an offer to join a pit crew at the Indianapolis 500 Motor Speedway—the ultimate accolade.  

    Cory returned to visit me every so often after that, grateful for the GED help, even calling me the best teacher he’d ever had. Of course, all I had done was to listen respectfully and allow him to share his well-kept secret. His visits gave me the opportunity to probe the reasons for his success and his ability to perform as a really terrific mechanic. He told me, “In my mind, I can see how the engine comes apart and goes back together. It’s like I have a picture to work from—it’s easy.”

    Most teachers have similar stories to tell. There are countless tales of kids who don’t fit the mold of school, who demonstrate unusual talents, and who often succeed in spite of expectations. But Cory has stuck with me. I realized that what Cory found easy would leave most valedictorians at a loss. That understanding led me to ask: Who is smarter? Who is more intelligent? 

    These kinds of questions are at the forefront of education today. Kids are exhibiting a vast array of talents—some related to school, many not. They build Web pages in the second grade and multitask effectively as teens. They share intimacies more freely than any other generation in history, usually on a worldwide network of buddies. They invent, solve, and create at a dizzying pace (just look at the growth of Content sites on the Web). The millennial generation is intelligent, productive, resourceful—and not necessarily easy to work with in the classroom.               

    On the other side of the coin, many students “do” school quite well. For instance, nearly one in five students in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area claimed a weighted GPA of 4.6 or better, according to a 2010 report by ASCD. But GPAs hardly reflect the real nature of intelligence. The prevailing reward system favors a certain type of student—the note-takers, textbook readers, and writers. In fact, some educators remarked that the Pittsburgh scores can be attributed to teacher-pleasing behavior—anything done on time and in the right format.  

    So it’s important to know a bit more about intelligence. Let’s consider a few findings:

    Intelligence and genes. Most people, kids included, believe intelligence is a genetic trait—that is, IQ is ”fixed” at birth. But it’s not. To the surprise of psychologists and researchers, IQ scores have been on the rise with each decade. Moreover, recent research shows that students who are told their achievement depends on believing in their ability to get smarter actually do better, while students who leave intelligence to fate and count on their genes do less well.  

    Measuring IQ. No agreement exists on the varying forms of intelligence, or how to measure IQ. Particularly, we don’t know enough about the brain and mind to settle the dispute between the cognitive scientists (intelligence is “all in brain function”) and social intelligence practitioners (“environment influences intelligence,” a`la Vygotsky).

    Emotions and intelligence. The advent of neuroscience makes the intelligence debate even fuzzier. Neurologist Antonio Damasio has shown how the brain and emotions intertwine, giving intelligence a clear emotional component. In fact, Robert Sternberg, a leading authority on intelligence from Harvard, believes that adding wisdom, creativity, personality, and emotional processing to the intelligence picture scrambles the conventional concept of intelligence to the extent that it may simply fall apart. Intelligence may be too multifaceted to reduce to one number or one cause.

    Where does this leave us as educators? I think it’s essential to keep students like Cory in mind. Some pondering points:

    • Just as intelligence isn’t narrowly focused or fixed, neither should education be anchored solely to traditional academic outcomes. To capture intelligent behavior, outcomes must be focused on a triad of performance indicators:  1) academic and content mastery; 2) skills for life, work, and citizenship; and 3) habits of mind or emotional competencies.
    • I have consistently questioned the current concept of rigor, arguing that rigor needs to be defined in terms of individual skills and strengths, not by the number of problems assigned for homework or the amount of reading crammed into an AP class. Cory‘s work as a mechanic qualified as ‘rigorous,’ but he failed traditional classes. That increasingly commonplace story describes children who are distractible, don’t read well, and can’t harness themselves to school—but who are highly creative, with great visual skills. It’s likely that in the future, we will need to find ways to measure competency as a blend of creativity, problem-solving, innovation, and self-reliance.
    • The fact that intelligent behavior also includes character virtues such as empathy, integrity, collaborative ability, and unbiased communication complicates the picture further. How do we activate these more subtle aspects of intelligence? And, again, how do we measure them?
    • In a chaotic global world, the idea that intelligence and environment are related takes on special significance. Will our world make children smarter or less so? And, more to the point, if intelligence is a function of beliefs about one’s abilities, how do we convince every student they can be a genius? 

     

  • Blog post
  • 2 years ago
  • Views: 893

• Edge-ucation Edge-ucation

  • From: Thom_Markham
  • Description:

    Want to really disrupt education? Make students smarter!

     

    “Incremental change isn’t going to get us where we need to go. We’ve got to be disruptive. You can’t keep doing the same stuff and expect different results.”

     -- Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, in recent comments  quoted by Tom Friedman in November 20, 2010, New York Times Opinion section

     

    Too true. But now what, Mr. Secretary? Better curriculum? Improved national standards? Web 2.0 technologies? Value added teacher evaluations? Union cooperation? Longer school days? Better yet, more school days? More charters? Fewer charters? And so on.

    I say, “Let’s disrupt.” Really disrupt. Here’s how: Stop tinkering with teaching and instead marshal all the personal technologies and best practices in peak performance available today—all field tested and proven, by the way—to help young human beings become better, smarter learners. In fact, don’t stop there. Make every child smarter—period.

    First, it’s possible. IQ scores are rising ten points a generation. In cognition circles, this is known as the Flynn Effect, named after James Flynn, a leading expert in intelligence. But this fact tells us little, other than confirming what neuroscience proved a decade ago: Human beings are malleable, not fixed. No one agrees on why IQ scores have risen, and I won’t discuss the competing theories. Just the fact that IQ does rise, however, should have every educator frothing at the mouth.

    But it doesn’t, partly because educators know virtually nothing about the brain, the tool of their trade, except that it houses some vague form of multiple intelligences or learning styles. These ideas are both popular. Unfortunately, cognitive scientists can’t find evidence for either one, though it is clear to any teacher, and most everyone in the world, that the human brain is infinitely multi-faceted. If you haven’t already picked it up, this is the first clue as to why we don’t yet try to make children smarter. To do so would be to nudge them to think outside the box. That’s disruptive.

    But let’s assume that the days of prescribing in endless detail what every child must know—and who certainly will wither, die, and not compete in the global economy if they fail to know it—are over. As a society, we’ve moved ahead. Our objective is to make every child smarter, in school and in life, by increasing their focus, creativity, flexibility, resiliency, communication and teamwork skills, and problem solving capability. In other words, we’ve decided to educate a child for the 21^st century.  

    How would we do it? I can think of five ways to start:

     

    • Tell students their genes have not failed them. This is an easy one. Just share with students what we know—and don’t know—about intelligence. I mentioned the most important finding: IQ is not fixed. The second finding: IQ rises when you believe it can rise, and when you try harder. See the research of Carol Dweck, who I have mentioned in the past. Most of all, tell your students the truth: IQ is a terribly flawed, stop-gap, out-dated measure of intelligence that cannot be described by any accurate scientific model. It’s a ‘something’ that we don’t understand. Then tell your students another fact: Intelligence may be influenced by genes, but your mother is not responsible for you not having the math gene. Intelligence is too complicated to be linked to specific genes. And your environment—an environment that you can choose, as you get older—will affect your intelligence just as much as your chromosomes, and maybe more. We just don’t know.

     

    • Forget your brain. This will be disruptive to the textbook industry (imagine!) but I doubt many students will mourn if told they can get smarter by using their heart and body than by exclusively focusing on their brain. But it’s true. I’ve done many a blog on this topic, so I won’t cover old ground. Here are the core facts, however. The Decade of the Brain, the legacy of behaviorism, and the almost total reliance on cognitive research as a guide to learning and intelligence is doing education a monumental disservice. As whole human beings, we function from the neck down as well as the neck up. The research into meditation, mindfulness, and heart intelligence all yield the same, sound results: A focus on the heart calms the hindbrain (the mediator of flight, fight, and stress), integrates emotions into the midbrain, encouraging creativity and divergent thinking, and pushes neural activity forward into the frontal lobes, the most evolved part of the brain and the site of planning, problem solving, and test taking. If every student in America spent the first ten minutes of the day in heart-focused meditation, the U.S. would lead the world in NAEP, PISA, or any other tests offered in the galaxy. This is the most powerful, proven method we have for making kids smarter, and we don’t use it. Disrupt, disrupt, disrupt!

     

    •  Make everyone smarter. In the global age, everyone can now benefit from what Asian societies have done well for centuries: use the power of the group mind to make each individual smarter. In high performing industries, networks and teams are commonplace. Consultation is a must. In schools, we call this cheating. There has been progress: ‘Group’ work is commonplace in schools. But there is a reason that the Dallas Cowboys aren’t called a football group. Teams draw upon a deeper level of commitment, purpose, synergy, intentionality, and transparent communication to achieve a goal. These techniques can be taught, practiced, and assessed in schools—and should be the norm. One beginning point: Stop the mass media’s archaic portrayals of the row-style classrooms from the 1950’s. I see these photos alongside articles purporting to ‘change’ education—and I cringe. All of us should.

     

    • Get real about creativity. Big subject, little progress—and there won’t be until a mass epiphany occurs. The sudden awakening: Creativity does not—and cannot—flourish within a standardized system. The more that educators attempt to control outcomes, the less creative students will be. Now, we spend a lot of energy trying to talk around that point (listen to student ‘voice’, ‘empower’ students, etc.), but students see through the disguise. The goal of industrial schooling is to define what children should know, instead of letting them tell us what they want to know. This disconnect is the true source of stress in education—and eventually some sort of quake will shake things loose as a desperate global society looks for out of the box solutions to critical issues. BTW, only one form of instruction supports the natural creativity of students: Start with questions, not a curriculum.

     

    • Stop calling them ‘subjects’.  I took this one from Sir Ken Robinson, the creativity leader in the U.K. Instead, use the term ‘discipline’ to describe the topics that students study. The difference: ‘Subject’ is a static term, implying information and facts in isolation, while ‘discipline’ ties knowing and doing into a single process, in which students learn to use information to do something useful. There are clues to this distinction: Discipline comes from the same root as ‘disciple.’ In every class, a teacher should be a leader of process, not a deliverer of the subject matter. Plus, have you ever heard of ‘intersubject’ education?

     

    Yes, we want to disrupt education. I don’t question the motives of the Secretary of Education, teachers, or anyone interested in the future of the 1.5 billion young people on the planet. But we are not yet emotionally and intellectually prepared to transform education—and in this age, like it or not, disruption and transformation are synonymous.  Education will not be an exception to this process, which means that eventually we will confront the question of whether we direct the disruption or just watch it happen.

     

     

  • Blog post
  • 2 years ago
  • Views: 499

• Want Children to “Pay Attentio Want Children to “Pay Attention”? Make Their Brains Curious! By Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed.

  • From: Judith_Willis
  • Description:

    

    Want Children to “Pay Attention”? Make Their Brains Curious!

    
    
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/radical-teaching/201005/want-children-pay-attention-make-their-brains-curious

    By Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed.
    From Psychology Today Online
    
    Curiouser and Curiouser
    Plato Under a Brain Scanner
    
         A few thousand years ago, in 360 B.C., Plato advised against force-feeding of facts to students. "Elements of instruction...should be presented to the mind in childhood; not, however, under any notion of forcing education. A freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."
    We now have neuroscience of learning research to support these recommendations to avoid forced instruction and provide children with the best environment and experiences for joyful learning. We have come to literally see how stress and curiosity edits which sensory information is given entry to our neural networks and where the input ends up.
    Social, emotional, hormonal, and nutritional influences are overtaking the attribution of intelligence to primarily genetic factors. Microbiology research reveals that emotions and experiences turn on or off portions of genes that determine how that gene will be expressed. Neuroplasticity research reveals that intelligence can be changed and guides us to educational and parenting strategies are neuro-logical to promote positive changes. Those are topics that will be in future posts here and are addressed in articles on my website www.RADTeach.com .
    In this post, combining my background as a neurologist and classroom teacher, I'll share my strategies to help parents and teachers get information "admitted" through brain's attention system.
    
    Children Are Paying Attention, Just Not to the Boring Things in Class
    Getting into the brain is like getting into an exclusive nightclub where only the glamorous few are selected. Once inside, another gatekeeper, stress, determines what makes the cut to enter the upper VIP lounge in the prefrontal cortex - that valuable 13% of cerebral architecture where our highest cognition and emotional reflection takes place. (That will be the next post.)
    The brain evolved to promote the survival of the animal and the species. That means giving priority to potential threat. Every second, of the millions of bits of sensory information from the eyes, ears, internal organs, skin, muscles, taste and smell receptors that are at the entry gate, only a few thousand make the cut. The system that determines what gets in - what the brain attends to is the Reticular Activating System or RAS. This primitive network of cells in the lower brainstem, through which all sensory input must pass to reach any higher regions of the brain, is essentially the same in your dog, cat, child, and you.
    The RAS favors intake of sights, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations that are most critical to survival of the animal and species. Priority goes to CHANGES in an animal or human's environment with priority to change appraised as threatening. When threat is perceived, the RAS automatically selects related sensory input and directs it to the lower brain where the involuntary response is not to think, but to react - fight, flight, or freeze.
    Force Feeding Won't Work Even on a Hungry Brain
    The RAS is a virtual editor that grants attention and admission to a small fraction of all the available sights, sounds, and tactile sensations available at any moment. This survival-directed filter is critical for animals in the wild, but as it has not changed significantly as man evolved, and the implications for the classroom or with children in the home are significant.
    
    When children's brains perceive threat (punishment or embarrassment in front of classmates for not doing homework, fear that they will be picked last for a kickball game, or anxiety that they will make an obvious error because they are not fluent in English) the RAS lets in only what is perceived as relevant to the threat. Unless the perception of threat is reduced, the brain persists in doing its primary job - protecting the human or animal from harm. The neural activity on scans during fear, sadness, anger or other stressful emotions is evident in the lower brain. In this stressed state "attention" is not under our control and the brain activity on scans drops way down in the prefrontal cortex. That higher, reflective, cognitive region of the brain does not receive the sensory input, determined irrelevant to survival. The day's lesson does fall on deaf ears.
    When students criticized for not paying attention to the lesson it doesn't mean they are inattentive. Their RAS is paying attention to (letting in) sensory input, just not the sensory input their teachers think in important.
    Now What?
    One of the great gifts of neuroimaging research is information about which sensory input gets through the RAS when threat is not perceived. When not under high stress alert, the RAS is particularly receptive to novelty and change that arouse curiosity. That is the key to the gate - the brain seeks input about the new, the unexpected, the colorful, musical, moving, aromatic sensations that are available when perceived or imagined threat is not blocking the way. When students are curious about something, they seek an explanation. This motivates them to persevere in seeking the information they now WANT to learn, what they need to be taught.
    Knowing about the RAS means we can promote classroom communities where students feel safe, where they can count of the adults in charge to enforce the rules that protect their bodies, property, and feelings from classmates who they perceive as threats to these things. Our increasing knowledge of what gains access through the RAS, once threat is reduced, offers clues to strategies that promote attentive focus to lessons in school and at home.
    Curiouser and Curiouser
    You can build novelty into teaching new information. Changes in voice, appearance, marking key points in color, variation in font size, hats, movement, lessons outdoors, music, curious photos, unexpected objects (a radish on each desk when students enter the classroom) get the RAS attentive to admit the accompanying sensory input of lessons that relates to the curious sensory input!
    Advertising a coming unit with curiosity provoking posters or adding clues or puzzle pieces each day invests curiosity as children predict what lesson might be coming and the RAS is primed to "select" the sensory input of that lesson when it is revealed. Playing a song when students enter the room can also promote curiosity; hence focus, if they know that there will be a link between some words in the song and something in the lesson. If a teacher, or parent helping with homework, walks backwards before a lesson about negative numbers, the RAS is primed by curiosity to follow along when a number line is unrolled on the floor start learning about negative numbers. Even a suspenseful pause in your speech before saying something particularly important builds anticipation as the students wonder what you will say or do next.
    
    To further alert the RAS, increase curiosity, and the subsequent memory of the information (learning) that explains the curious phenomenon, have children make PREDICTIONS. The predictions can be written down, shared with a partner, or held up on individual white boards at any point during a lesson. Don't break the participation or curiosity with a "yes" or "no", but maintain the interest by responding with a nod of acknowledgment or a "thanks you" so the other students will continue to predict. The brain actually learns based on a system of predictions and feedback as neuroplasticity strengthens neural networks used to make correct predictions and corrects memory networks used to make incorrect predictions. (This is why feedback is important so those faulty circuits can be replaced with accurate information.)
    Children Who Actually Get Excited When Asked, "What did you do in school today?"
    Recall how, as a child, you felt about radishes as garnish on your plate. Now, imagine walking into your childhood classroom and finding a radishs on all the desks. Students' RAS will be curious about this mundane object because it on THEIR desk in a classroom, and not on a dinner plate. Now their attention is alerted to the novelty and curiosity so the RAS admits sensory input "clues" to the puzzle of the novel object on their desks. They are engaged and motivated to discover the reason the radishes are there. Now they are attentive and their brains are engaged.
    
    Younger students learning the names and characteristics of shapes might have the opportunity to develop a concept of roundness and evaluate what qualities make some radishes have greater "roundness" than others. The lesson for older students might address as analysis of similarities and differences. The RAS will respond to the color, novelty, peer interaction of evaluating these objects that are usually disdained when found in their salads as they develop their skill of observation, comparison, contrast, and even prediction as to why the radishes that seemed so similar at first, become unique as they become detectives using magnifying glasses. Students' stress levels remain low as they use their individual learning strengths to sketch, describe, or take notes about what the radishes in their group have in common and how the differ.
    As the survival tool, the RAS alerts to curiosity and remembers the resolution of the brain's prediction, as animals need to learn and repeat behaviors that are satisfying and fulfill survival needs, such as eating tasty food or following the scent of a potential mate. Engaged and focused brains are alert to sensory input that accompanies the pleasurable sensations. In animals these associations will make them more likely to find the source of pleasure in the future. As students enjoy the investigation with the radishes, the required lesson content can follow the open gateway to reach the higher, cognitive brain.
    The novel experience of a simple radish, when used to promote curiosity and prediction, is likely to do more than carry the learning experiences into long-term memory. When children are asked that evening, "What did you learn in school today?" they are likely to further strengthen the memory as they describe both the radish AND the lesson as grateful parents give the positive feedback of attentive listening.
     
    "Ask Dr. Judy" Free Webinar Series:
    Topic: Why Don't My Students Pay Attention?
     
    Wednesday, May 5, 2010 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT
    To preregister
    https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/251272049
    
    
    Source URL: http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/42444
    Links:?[1] http://www.RADTeach.com?[2] http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u302/What has changed_ Can it hurt me?.jpg?[3] https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/251272049?[4] http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/teaser/2010/05/curiouser-and-curioser.jpg
    
    
    
    

  • Blog post
  • 3 years ago
  • Views: 10175

• Goldie Hawn and Dr Judy Willis Goldie Hawn and Dr Judy Willis Building Better Brains

  • From: Judith_Willis
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    Goldie Hawn and Dr Judy Willis Building Better Brains as they Bring Neuroscience into Classrooms. Neurology Now: Publication of the American Academy of Neurology http://journals.lww.com/neurologynow/Fulltext/2010/06020/Golden_Opportunity.17.aspx

  • 3 years ago
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