Oh my! I have fallen way behind on typing my thoughts for the Book Study, fortunately with having a great staff we met as a school in December to share great ideas from the 3 different books that we were reading. in January we met about Part 3, we met again in February we met about part 4 and finally we met at the end of March as a whole school to share even more strategies. As a team studying the 40 Engaging Brain Based Tools for the Classroom by Michael Scadden we did keep a google doc with comments about many of the strategies we discussed.
Part 3 of the book is titled Promoting Understanding. This part of book acknowledges that students need to be aware of their own learning and their learning strengths. Students as young as Kindergarten should be aware that they need sleep, exercise, water and healthy food and they learn by using their senses. First graders can start learning simple facts about the brain. Second and Thirds graders can start to learn about learning styles and conditions. Upper elementary students can learn about the concept of multiple intellegences.
Ch. 21 Input Through Learning Styles The 4 major learning styles include visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile;two other minor ones include smell and taste.
Chapter 22 – Learning Preferences – looking at light in the classroom, noise level, playing different types of music (jazz, strings, etc.) Students give a rating and reflect on how they learn during a certain strategy.
Chapter 23 – Multiple Intelligences – It’s not interest, it’s the understanding that we have SOME talent across all areas or multiple areas. Developing skills in one area will increase abilities in other areas.Kids are missing “naturalistic” intelligence – teachers continue to share stories about how we play outside and what activities they can do outside.
Chapter 24 – Motivators – different types of connections to motivators. Students may not know the difference between good pain/bad pain, good attention/bad attention. Students who are surrounded by conflict may not know what a loving relationship/connection feels like. Some of the Trama Training we had touches upon this and we need to model good attention and how to get it.
Chapter 25 – Four Great Questions – What do you want? What are YOU doing to get what you want? Is it working? What is your plan? Make the students accountable. I have found that when students make their own goals they are more willing to work towards them.
Chapter 26 – WIIFM- What’s in it for me? We need to teach the students to be intrinsically motivated. They want stuff and if they want to be successful in life they need to learn what we are teaching them now.
Chapter 27 – Pulling Your Own Strings– No one can control your life unless you let them.
Chapter 28 – Goal Setting- Remind students a goal is a target. Sometimes missing a goal can be destructive, but remember to use the power of yet. Short term goals that are simple can reduce the risk of failure. We use SMART goals in PLC, in this book they added SMART(Y) the Y for making the goals personal. We all have our own Gaudy goals for teaching, mine is that all of my ELL students will increase at least 1 ELL level this year.
Chapter 29 – Myffirmations” Self talk is so important for us, we need to be positive and not negative. Our own thought are our biggest source of negative input. BE positive in our expectations. How easy is it for us to say I can’t do this? We need to be be positive.
Chapter 30 – Overviews- Overviews can be given orally or reinforces with visual forms. That is why we post our learning targets for the day. 4 questions to ask to help with overviews are 1. What am I expected to learn? 2. How will I be able to learn it? How will I know when I have been successful? How will I be able to use it.
Part 4 –
Chapter 31 – Framing- “Don’t think of a banana.” Or “Don’t panic!” You just thought of a banana or thought of panic, in Framing this type of language will sow negative thoughts. Emotional words literally slow the brain, we need to thoughtful in the words we use to introduce or teach a topic, it takes time Eliminate the word “don’t and try” Aim for what you what you want rather than what you want to avoid.
Chapter 32 – Prewiring This cannot be used all the time but when you give a learner some expectation of what is going to happen, it can create excitement, but also help with the probability of success.
Chapter 33 – Loops The brain loves to make connections with patterns, looping can be short term like finishing a statement, midterm like a finishing a paper mache puppet. Long term such as the work that is done in a theme over a period of time or future- focused that can used in prewiring. In teaching K-5 language arts I totally get to see how the curriculum is looping from grade level to grade level.
Chapter 34 – Feedback– Accurate feedback if vital for learners so they can understand the next step in their learning. When we can add emotion in the form of fun, movement and the unexpected it will make memories more meaningful.
Chapter 35 – Mind Maps and Mindscapes not only helpful in Art, but in any subject. Mind mapping can be sequential and random.
Chapter 36 – Reflection-We need to make time to reflect, at first it is hard, but will get easier, it is a very important part of the learning loop.
Chapter 37 – Lo, Mo, and Ho Questions LO- Lower order recall questions, MO- middle order questions involve understanding and HO- higher order questions are inventing and evaluating. We just need to remember to use all 3 types of questions.
Chapter 38 – Inclusive Responses– make sure we include everyone in expecting them to respond to questions. We have done lots of this
Chapter 39 – Response time Silence can be awkward, but make sure we ask good questions, avoid giving clues, don’t just pick the first student to raise their hands.
Chapter 40 Hands- Free- Don’t have kids raise their hands, use sticks, random picker.