Designing Brain Compatible Learning Practical, Cognitive Science Principles

Designing Brain Compatible Learning

Practical, Cognitive Science Principles

What we will address…..1) What is the Primacy- Recency effect?

2) Do I pay attention to how the brain learns best and incorporate these practices into my teaching?

3)How does stress make you dumb?

4) Is it natural to be lazy and irresponsible?

5)What role does emotion play in memory storage?

6) What is the relationship between movement and memory storage?

7)How can chunking techniques be used to teach with the brain in mind

8)What is confabulation?

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Lesson sequence minutes The Primacy- Recency Effect

• Frontal lobe: emotional control center, home to personality, judgment, language, memory, problem solving and language

• Temporal lobe: hearing, auditory processing, contains the hippocampus.

• Cerebellum: movement , motor control, memory• Occipital lobe: Vision• Parietal Lobe: sorts information, knowledge of numbers

and their relations, spatial awareness• Brain Stem: joins the brain to the spinal cord. nerve

connection from the brain to the body

• Hippocampus: looks like the horns of a ram, it functions in long term memory. People who suffer from Alzheimer's disease and amnesia have damage to the hippocampus

Dendrites grow when you learn something!

• If you continue to grow dendrites your IQ can grow and you are less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease!

Sleep

• Sleep deprivation invokes the starvation responses of the body.

• "Sleep deprivation is bad for your brain when you are trying to do high-level [thinking] tasks," study co-author J. Christian Gillin, MD, tells WebMD. "It may have serious consequences both on performance and on the way your brain functions.“

• Sleep helps to encode memories for long term memory; lack of sleep lowers the brains capacity to learn new things.

• Children need 9-11 hours of sleep

Bad hormone and good neurotransmitter

• Cortisol- produced as a reaction to stress. It can cause feelings of despair, elevate cholesterol levels, and cause the destruction of neurons. Stress can make you dumb!

• Endorphins- released when a person senses signs of support affection and positive regard.

HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO THE CLASSROOM?

• Classrooms that that encourage a relaxed, enthusiastic, and cooperative approach to learning are usually perceived as enjoyable because they stimulate the release of endorphins.

• Hydration is required for myelin sheath to work properly: students should be allowed to drink water during class time.

• Consider allowing eating in class as well…a hungry student cannot focus until primary needs are met. (cool fact: neurons are the only cells without insulin receptors)

Teaching to both halves of the brain

Left Side• Logical• Sequential• Structured and planned• Rational• Prefers talking and writing• Linear• Details

Right Side• Intuitive• Random• Spontaneous• emotional• Prefers demonstrations• holistic• Big picture

Teach content within a context that is meaningful to students, and that connects to their own lives and experiences.

The specializations of each hemisphere develop to their fullest when informed by the opposite hemisphere.

Positive Negative

Attractive surroundings Sterile surroundings

Student work displayed Student work not displayed

Low stress lighting Poor inappropriate lighting

Encouraging teacher Negative attitude of teacher

Offer choice and variety One size fits all

Provide wait time Unnecessary pressure

Provide think time Challenge inappropriate

Consider learning styles Everyone does the same task regardless of style or multiple intelligence strengths

Students are not lazy by nature

Our brains are hard wired for survival. Our brains are hard wired to be productive. Laziness is unnatural! If a student seems consistently lazy, then

something is going on with that student that should be investigated.

Emotion

The brain can only function on one thing at a time and it is our emotions that dictate to what we pay attention to.

Emotion focuses our attention, and attention sets the stage for learning, even people who appear to be multitasking are in reality switching their attention from one task to another.

How does this relate to the classroom

• Whenever we recall an event the brain reconstructs it from emotions, location, sights, sounds taste and smells associated with it.

• We can construct memories of learned material by moving location example

Move around the classroom outside

Under a tree Field trip

When we recall an event the brain reconstructs the memory from emotions locations sights sounds taste and smells associated with it.

What did you have for dinner last night?

Short Term Memory(working memory)

• Short term memory is like a desk top: Before you can process information it must be brought to the desktop.

• Memory will stay for 20 seconds unless there is impact or processing to transplant.

• Short term memory can only handle seven pieces of unrelated info

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HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO THE CLASSROOM?

• Information is held in short term memory for 20 sec. Lecture is not effective unless you stop every 10 min to allow students to process the information and make connections. If connections are not made the information is lost

• Chuck information into meaningful related pieces. Never more than seven pieces at a time

Long term memory

• Long term memory is set up like a super complex filing system

• Information is chunked into categories. Every time we learn something new it is filled in an appropriate place

• Memories are not filled as pictures. Sounds are stored in one place, sights in another , colors someplace else.

We file by similarities and we retrieve by differences

What does this mean to the classroom1)Change it up.2)Don’t teach things that are easily

confused on the same day.

AVOID CONFABULATION

• The brain seeks wholeness. It will fill in the holes in partial learning with made-up learning and experiences, and it will convince itself that this was the original learning all along.

HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO THE CLASSROOM?

• DEAL WITH MISCONCEPTIONS• Students should summarize material they

already understand, not material they are coming to know.

• Homework is meant for practice NOT FOR LEARNING. If the students do not understand the concept they should not be made to processes it at home or confabulation will take place

Movement is attached to memory in the Cerebellum

• The cerebellum is responsible for coordinating movement, planning, motor activities, learning and remembering of physical skills and for some cognitive abilities.

LETS GET PHYSICAL

Why?

• Gets oxygen and nutrients to cognitive centers of the brain via bloodstream.

• Relaxes students and improves their perspective/attitude -creates mild euphoria

• Supports cognitive theory regarding how students best learn

• Makes an abstract concept vivid and thereby illuminates it.

• It is fun and intrinsically motivating.

HOW DO I DO TO THIS IN THE CLASSROOM?

• Attach content to a piece of the body (using fingers to represent the migration of chromosomes during mitosis)

• Line up (lining up according to cards to show the stages of mitosis)

• Body sculpture (make a body sculpture to represent elements of a habitat)

• Charades• Inner or outer circle• Summary ball

What we will address…..1) What is the Primacy- Recency effect?

2) Do I pay attention to how the brain learns best and incorporate these practices into my teaching?

3)How does stress make you dumb?

4) Is it natural to be lazy and irresponsible?

5)What role does emotion play in memory storage?

6) What is the relationship between movement and memory storage?

7)How can chunking techniques be used to teach with the brain in mind

8)What is confabulation?

15 20 25 30 35 40 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90

Lear

ning

pot

entia

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Lesson sequence minutes

• Rick Wormeli. Practical, Cognitive Science Principals (Gr.3-12.all) SDE Conference Las Vegas , Nevada, July 23

• Gayle H. Gregory. Terence Parry Designing Brain Compatible Learning. Thousand Oaks California: Corwin Press 2006