Brain-based Teaching: Teaching with the Brain in Mind

This year I was fortunate to be invited into a literacy cohort for professional development (PD) along with two teachers from my school.  The PD is intended for newer teachers who teach in the K-2 grade band.  This year I'm working with English language learners in first through fifth grade at all levels of English proficiency.  However, what I'm learning transfers easily to the 3-5 grade band and beyond. 

Part of our homework always includes reading a few chapters from Teaching with the  Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen.  I had read some of the first edition, but we are working on the 2nd edition.  There is a surprising amount of change between the two, much in organization, but also due to the advances in brain research. 

Before I read the next chapter, I thought I'd blog about what I just read to do a little synthesizing.  Though, I might learn more by just taking a nap. ; )

Chapter 3: Teaching with the Brain in Mind

Most influential factors of learning

Engagement
Repetition
Input quantity
Coherence
Timing
Error Correction
Emotional States

Engagement

To be engaged students must have glucose (sugar from food), water and feel safe and secure to learn. 

I've taught my older students these three essentials (food, water, security) to stress the importance of showing respect to each other so they can all learn (and the teacher so we can teach).

Teachers must choose relevant, meaningful tasks and help students know the daily objectives and to help students to design their own goals.

My professional goal for the year is to be intentional, which means I always have a specific goal.

Despite all we must teach students, we can only expect a limited amount of attention for direct instruction:

5-8 minutes for K-2 learners
8-12 minutes for 3-5 learners
12-15 minutes for 6-12 learners

15-18 minutes for adult learners

or (according to others)

the learners age plus twelve minutes.

This knowledge explains the popularity and effectiveness of mini-lessons and workshop models. 

Repetition

Repetition allows students to reach mastery with gains in accuracy and fluency.  Yet, students can get bored if we get too repetitious with learning activities.  We therefore must create variations on repetiton with covert pre-exposure, overt previewing, covert priming, overt review and overt revision.  Priming has been a focus in my training and is most relevant and effective in vocabulary development.  Priming can happen via vocabulary tests, read-alouds, shared reading, videos, etc. 

Input Quantity

We can only learn so much at a time without a little mental break.  When we rest our brain is busy at work solidifying our learning.  To help this, we can provide processing time between instruction.  Like the GLAD program 10-2s: teach for ten minutes, give kids two minutes to talk, write, process, think, and hopefully, rest their brains a little. 

Coherence

We can get learner attention with novel, specific and emotional content.  We can make the content meaningful if we activate and connect background knowledge, learn actively in context and are reflective with the content.  By learning errors in background knowledge and validating their thinking when possile, students will alter their conceptual models more.

Timing

Adding movement or breaks between or during learning greatly enhances attention and energy levels, though all students will have different attention and energy cycles.

Error Correction

Timely, specific feedback makes more accurate, complex connections.  Digital-natives demand more timely feedback than ever before.  Though at times we need to hold back on feedback until a later time if learners may feel sensitive. 

When I do interactive writing with students, we return to the writing later to begin editing.  That way learners can help find errors without embarressment.

Emotional States

We want our learners above all to feel safe and comfortable in the classroom.  We want to excite them about our content; encourage them to take risks; increase enjoyment to maximize their learning.