Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains

Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains

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  • Author: Donna Wilson
  • Publisher: ASCD
  • ISBN: 1416622144
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 148

If the difference between a student's success and failure were something specific you could teach, wouldn't you? Metacognition is exactly that—a tool that helps students unlock their brain's amazing power and take control of their learning. Educational researchers and professional developers Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers have been exploring and using the explicit teaching of metacognition for years, and in this book they share a practical way to teach preK-12 students how to drive their brains by promoting the following practices: * Adopt an optimistic outlook toward learning, * Set goals, * Focus their attention, * Monitor their progress, and * Engage in practices that enhance cognitive flexibility. Wilson and Conyers explain metacognition and how it equips students to meet today's rigorous education standards. They present a unique blend of useful metaphors, learning strategies, and instructional tips you can use to teach your students to be the boss of their brains. Sample lessons show these ideas in a variety of classroom settings, and sections on professional practice help you incorporate these tools (and share them with colleagues and parents) so that you are teaching for and with metacognition. Research suggests that metacognition is key to higher student achievement, but studies of classroom practice indicate that few students are taught to use metacognition and the supporting cognitive strategies that make learning easier. You can teach metacognition to your students, so why wouldn't you? This book shows you how.


Five Big Ideas for Effective Teaching

Five Big Ideas for Effective Teaching

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  • Author: Donna Wilson
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 0807763764
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 225

This is the second edition of the seminal text designed to empower educators with an innovative and inspiring conceptual framework for effective teaching. This bestseller is grounded in the synergy of five big ideas for connecting mind, brain, and education research to classroom practice: neuroplasticity, potential, malleable intelligence, the Body-Brain System, and metacognition. Updated and expanded to include new sections on social and emotional learning, this edition offers a firm foundation for implementing current rigorous standards. The authors draw on their experience working with tens of thousands of educators worldwide to drive the book's focus on practical application. Essential ideas are reinforced through vignettes, examples, inspirational stories from teachers, strategies, reflective questions, and current research on how people learn. New for the Second Edition: An exploration of how guiding students to develop social, emotional, cognitive, affective, and behavioral competencies can improve their personal relationships, peer and teacher interactions, and academic outcomes. An examination of recent advances in understanding how brain plasticity extends over the life span, how working memory supports students to tackle more complex learning tasks, and how teaching students about growth mindsets can power learning. A synthesis of the science behind the power of positivity, learning potential, metacognition, the social aspects of cognition, and the Body-Brain System for classroom and school applications. An expanded reference list with relevant new publications.


Developing Growth Mindsets

Developing Growth Mindsets

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  • Author: Donna Wilson
  • Publisher: ASCD
  • ISBN: 1416629165
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 180

Human beings have tremendous potential to acquire new knowledge, develop new skills, and improve their brains throughout life. By explicitly teaching learners about brain plasticity and malleable intelligence (the idea that they can become functionally smarter through effort) and by modeling and teaching specific learning strategies, teachers can help students experience higher levels of success as they develop a growth mindset. Discovering that learning changes their brains helps students develop this growth mindset—the belief that they can improve their knowledge and skills through the use of learning strategies and with guidance and support from teachers, coaches, and mentors. Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers share strategies and techniques for developing growth mindsets based on their BrainSMART® program for bridging the science of learning to the practice of teaching and elaborate on their seven principles for developing and sustaining growth mindsets: * Understand the mindsets. * Keep plasticity front of mind. * Learn with practical optimism. * Set growth goals. * Get the feedback needed. * Improve methods. * Focus on progress, not perfection. By maintaining a growth mindset about your students' learning potential and applying learning strategies and techniques like those shared in this book, you can guide your students to continually develop a growth mindset—and experience a positive, upward learning spiral of success!


The Brain-compatible Classroom

The Brain-compatible Classroom

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  • Author: Laura Erlauer
  • Publisher: ASCD
  • ISBN: 0871207486
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 179

Did you know that the best time to learn something new is during the first two hours after you wake up and the last two hours before you go to sleep? Did you know that stressing key points in color can boost memory retention by 25 percent? Author Laura Erlauer has studied brain research and applied it to classroom teaching in a way that is both intuitive and scientific. Synthesizing recent research exploring how the brain works, she explains how students' emotions and stress affect their ability to learn, how the physical classroom environment influences learning, and what forms of assessment work best. Drawing on her experience as a teacher and principal, Erlauer summarizes current brain research and shows how teachers can use this knowledge in the classroom every day. The book covers a wide variety of topics, including * The most effective use of collaborative learning; * Simple ways to keep the attention of your students for the whole class period; * Keys to involving students in decision making to increase their engagement and achievement; * Ways to make lesson content relevant to motivate students; and * Things every teacher can to do limit stress in the classroom and school environment. Each chapter provides examples from real classrooms, showing how the research can be used to improve student learning. The ideas and strategies presented are from a variety of grade levels and subject areas and can be used immediately to create a classroom where students can reach their full potential.


How to Teach So Students Remember

How to Teach So Students Remember

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  • Author: Marilee Sprenger
  • Publisher: ASCD
  • ISBN: 1416626247
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 231

Memory is inextricable from learning; there's little sense in teaching students something new if they can't recall it later. Ensuring that the knowledge teachers impart is appropriately stored in the brain and easily retrieved when necessary is a vital component of instruction. In How to Teach So Students Remember, author Marilee Sprenger provides you with a proven, research-based, easy-to-follow framework for doing just that. This second edition of Sprenger's celebrated book, updated to include recent research and developments in the fields of memory and teaching, offers seven concrete, actionable steps to help students use what they've learned when they need it. Step by step, you will discover how to actively engage your students with new learning; teach students to reflect on new knowledge in a meaningful way; train students to recode new concepts in their own words to clarify understanding; use feedback to ensure that relevant information is binding to necessary neural pathways; incorporate multiple rehearsal strategies to secure new knowledge in both working and long-term memory; design lesson reviews that help students retain information beyond the test; and align instruction, review, and assessment to help students more easily retrieve information. The practical strategies and suggestions in this book, carefully followed and appropriately differentiated, will revolutionize the way you teach and immeasurably improve student achievement. Remember: By consciously crafting lessons for maximum "stickiness," we can equip all students to remember what's important when it matters.


Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain

Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain

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  • Author: Janet Zadina
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 1118567617
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 295

From an award-winning neuroscience researcher with twenty years of teaching experience, Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain uses educator-friendly language to explain how the brain learns. Steering clear of “neuro-myths,” Dr. Janet Zadina discusses multiple brain pathways for learning and provides practical advice for creating a brain-compatible classroom. While there are an abundance of books and workshops that aim to integrate education and brain science, educators are seldom given concrete, actionable advice that makes a difference in the classroom. Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain bridges that divide by providing examples of strategies for day-to-day instruction aligned with the latest brain science . The book explains not only the sensory/motor pathways that are familiar to most educators (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic), it also explores the lesser known pathways--reward/survival, language, social, emotional, frontal lobe, and memory/attention--and how they can be tapped to energize and enhance instruction. Educators are forever searching for new and improved ways to convey information and inspire curiosity, and research suggests that exploiting different pathways may have a major effect on learning. Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain allows readers to see brain science through the eyes of a teacher—and teaching through the eyes of a brain scientist.


Learning Begins

Learning Begins

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  • Author: Andrew C. Watson
  • Publisher: A Teacher's Guide to the Learning Brain
  • ISBN: 9781475833362
  • Category : Attention
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

Learning Begins, written by a teacher for teachers, translates current brain research into practical classroom strategies. Because students learn with their brains, it simply makes sense for teachers to explore educational psychology and neuroscience. And yet, information in these fields can be daunting and contradictory. Worse still, few researchers can clearly explain the specific classroom uses of their remarkable discoveries. Learning Begins both explains this research and makes it useful for teachers and administrators. Part I investigates the science of working memory: a cognitive capacity essential to all school work. When teachers recognize the many classroom perils that can overwhelm working memory, they can use research-aligned strategies to protect it, and thereby promote student learning. Part II reveals the complexities of student attention. By understanding the three neural sub-processes that create attention, teachers can structure their classrooms and their lessons to help students focus on and understand new material. Written in a lively and approachable voice, based on years of classroom experience and a decade of scientific study, Learning Begins makes educational psychology and neuroscience clear and useful in schools and classrooms.


Learning to Love Math

Learning to Love Math

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  • Author: Judy Willis
  • Publisher: ASCD
  • ISBN: 1416612289
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 270

Is there a way to get students to love math? Dr. Judy Willis responds with an emphatic yes in this informative guide to getting better results in math class. Tapping into abundant research on how the brain works, Willis presents a practical approach for how we can improve academic results by demonstrating certain behaviors and teaching students in a way that minimizes negativity. With a straightforward and accessible style, Willis shares the knowledge and experience she has gained through her dual careers as a math teacher and a neurologist. In addition to learning basic brain anatomy and function, readers will learn how to * Improve deep-seated negative attitudes toward math. * Plan lessons with the goal of "achievable challenge" in mind. * Reduce mistake anxiety with techniques such as errorless math and estimation. * Teach to different individual learning strengths and skill levels. * Spark motivation. * Relate math to students' personal interests and goals. * Support students in setting short-term and long-term goals. * Convince students that they can change their intelligence. With dozens of strategies teachers can use right now, Learning to Love Math puts the power of research directly into the hands of educators. A Brain Owner's Manual, which dives deeper into the structure and function of the brain, is also included—providing a clear explanation of how memories are formed and how skills are learned. With informed teachers guiding them, students will discover that they can build a better brain . . . and learn to love math!


Brain-Compatible Activities, Grades 6-8

Brain-Compatible Activities, Grades 6-8

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  • Author: David A. Sousa
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster
  • ISBN: 1510701141
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 96

Brain research has provided a tremendous opportunity to develop instructional techniques that facilitate the brain's innate learning capacity. As educators, we can take this knowledge and apply it to the strategies we use in our classrooms. This essential resource, based on David A. Sousa's best-seller How the Brain Learns, Third Edition, provides ready-to-use, brain-compatible activities that feature some of the following strategies: • Graphic organizers • Mnemonic devices • Cooperative learning • Movement to enhance retention • Music to stimulate brain activity and creativity These activities, correlated with national standards, cover all the content areas in grades 6–8 and include topics such as vocabulary, characterization, percentages, word problems, family history, historical research, mitosis, chemical equations, and much more! The more we understand how the brain learns, the more instructional options we have. This unique resource helps you make the most of the brain's learning potential and transform your teaching practices to engage every student in your classroom.


Teach Students How to Learn

Teach Students How to Learn

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  • Author: Saundra Yancy McGuire
  • Publisher: Taylor & Francis
  • ISBN: 100097815X
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 182

Co-published with and Miriam, a freshman Calculus student at Louisiana State University, made 37.5% on her first exam but 83% and 93% on the next two. Matt, a first year General Chemistry student at the University of Utah, scored 65% and 55% on his first two exams and 95% on his third—These are representative of thousands of students who decisively improved their grades by acting on the advice described in this book.What is preventing your students from performing according to expectations? Saundra McGuire offers a simple but profound answer: If you teach students how to learn and give them simple, straightforward strategies to use, they can significantly increase their learning and performance. For over a decade Saundra McGuire has been acclaimed for her presentations and workshops on metacognition and student learning because the tools and strategies she shares have enabled faculty to facilitate dramatic improvements in student learning and success. This book encapsulates the model and ideas she has developed in the past fifteen years, ideas that are being adopted by an increasing number of faculty with considerable effect.The methods she proposes do not require restructuring courses or an inordinate amount of time to teach. They can often be accomplished in a single session, transforming students from memorizers and regurgitators to students who begin to think critically and take responsibility for their own learning. Saundra McGuire takes the reader sequentially through the ideas and strategies that students need to understand and implement. First, she demonstrates how introducing students to metacognition and Bloom’s Taxonomy reveals to them the importance of understanding how they learn and provides the lens through which they can view learning activities and measure their intellectual growth. Next, she presents a specific study system that can quickly empower students to maximize their learning. Then, she addresses the importance of dealing with emotion, attitudes, and motivation by suggesting ways to change students’ mindsets about ability and by providing a range of strategies to boost motivation and learning; finally, she offers guidance to faculty on partnering with campus learning centers.She pays particular attention to academically unprepared students, noting that the strategies she offers for this particular population are equally beneficial for all students. While stressing that there are many ways to teach effectively, and that readers can be flexible in picking and choosing among the strategies she presents, Saundra McGuire offers the reader a step-by-step process for delivering the key messages of the book to students in as little as 50 minutes. Free online supplements provide three slide sets and a sample video lecture.This book is written primarily for faculty but will be equally useful for TAs, tutors, and learning center professionals. For readers with no background in education or cognitive psychology, the book avoids jargon and esoteric theory.