- Our brain is plastic. It changes as a result of experience. Although the brain is more easiy changes early in life, it remains plastic throughout life. Experience is critical to learning. Learning changes the brain, that's why educators need to understand the importance of activities we provide. Stimulating activities create the desired activation in the brain, leading to desired change.
Interesting fact: a group of rats was kept with toys in one cage, another group was alone without any toys. The addition of the toys led to better brain-development and better problem solving and learning. The effects of this can be seen in children who grow up with very little stimulation (orphans that grow up in institutions). They perform worse on educational tasks than children who had activities with language and touch from caretakers.
The important point to keep in mind is that we teachers change the brain. Such responsibility! Next time to plan a lesson, think what changes you home to see as a result of your work.
- In the brain, images are preferable to words. We remember pictures more easily than words. This is true for all learners. Providing pictures with text or oral information results in over six times recall than when presented in oral textual form alone. This doesn't mean you must always provide visuals for students. It is more effetive if the studets find or create the visual material themselves.
Creating a visual takes a great deal of effort and increases the cognitive load, but you will be surprised how well the students will recall the material.
- Brain can't distinguish between mental and visual images, and the effect in the brain is th same. Have students imagine processes and imagine them doing a process.
- The body affects learning. Some kinds of movement, such as gesturing, seem to be closely related to language. Gesture may have been the first language. It is an important funtion in language communication and in thinking. Movement provides oxygen, which is a fuel for the brain. Introduce a lot of movement to your lessons. Let the students stand up do the activities involing movement.
Introduce a lot of movement to your lessons. Let the students stand up and do the activities involing movement. Their brain needs oxygen. A few generations ago teachers required students to stant up to recite in class.
- Speaking and writing are expressive pathways, whereas listening and seeing are receptive. Too often we focus only on receptie aspects of learning, which is why students stumble and try to eplain what they really understand; they just can't say it. Students must speak more in the classroom to learn vocabulary or pronunciation, it will help them think better, reassemble their memory and put it in a meaningful way.
One strategy that should be used about twenty minutes is called ''stand up and explain''. All students get up and get in pairs. You say that one of them (who's got more jewelry, most buttons, brightest colours, biggest feet) explains to the other one what has just been presented. This gets half of the class speaking.
Interesting fact: disengaged students usually have their hands down at their side, while those who are truly traying to explain will be gesturing.
- Memory is not a place or a thing, but a process. If attntion is divided when memory is being encoded, the memory will not be strong.
- People are more likely to remember new information when they reformat it into categories of related information. It's like in a jigsaw puzzle, individual puzzles make no sense, only put together they make a picture. Students must have a model of related ideas, not just isolated facts.
- The difference between the novice learners and experts is not only how much they know, but also how they organize what they know. Using a strategy of category construction as part of learning process is an effective method.
- Learning involves working with the material in such a way that it goes from working memory (hearing the lecture or reading the chapter) and into long-term memory (recalling the information). There is no way round this!
- There are two ways to hold material in working memory: 1) rehearsal and repetition and 2) chunk the information into groups (as we do for telephone numbers: area code, a three-digit prefix and a phone number).
Interesting fact: the least effective strategies to remember are highlighting and underlining, as well as summary writing.
- Ideally repetition of the material should occur when we are about ready to forget the information.
- Avoid instructions that are too long for working memory capacity. Our working memory capacity is from four to seven items of information.
- Refluexion is critical to make connections. Use the 10/80/10 rule planning your lesson. Spend 10 % of time making connections with the upcoming material, 80 % on content, and 10 % on reflexion. Here you can find out information about the ways of reflection.
- Understanding that the brain can get exhausted, just like the physical body, helps to design more effective lessons.
- Brain releases dopamine when experience is pleasurable. As a pleasure-seeking organ the bain also releases dopamine in expectation or rewarding and pleasurable experiences.
Interesting fact: a student may love colouring and does it for hours, but according to research, once we pay them to do it, they spend less time on it and show less enjoyment. This can be applyed to learning and school work in general: a student who is working for a reward such as a grade could lose inteerest in the process. Once a student works for a reward, he or she begins to lose the enjoyment of the activity.
- We persist in hobbies and sports that are difficult to learn because the eventual achievement is rewarding. The brain's reward system is what keeps people hooked on video games, Sudoku, and addictions, such as gambling or shopping. When students have sense that they have learned something, they feel great. Our brain rewards if what we have learned is important to survive.
Interesting fact: In video games players are motivated to get to the next level or to get medallions or badges. The dopamine's effect is more likely the motivation to act. Unexpected rewards release dopamine, as when we get a treat for no reason. Results that come too easy, have a negative emotional impact.
- Online materials often provide a sense of progress through moving to another level - sounds or icons or bars that show progress, a student is in charge of his/her progress. Most curricular identify progress as moving to the next grade level, but student has very little control in that. As a result, our current system works against motivation.
- One of the ways to geve students a sense of control is to provide a sense of choice in the classroom.
- The joy of learning comes from figuring something out. When a teacher creates a handout for the class outlining everything students naad to know for the unit so that they can memorize the information, he (the teacher) robs students of the joy of learning.
- Students will listen better if their brain is searching for the answer rather than following the notes handed out before the lecture.
- Get the aha! moment. The brain rewards us by making us feel good for figuring something out to make sense of our world. That is why people who are very busy still take time to work a jigsaw, a crossword or Sudoku.
Interesting fact: Textbooks traditionally start with a definition or concept, then an explanation; then they give examples and ask students to do problems or answer questions. Effective teaching reverses this process.
The brain would respond more positively and release pleasurable chemicals to something meaningful: it might be important for survival.
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