Helping the Brain to Learn

This week’s article summary is actually a short SlideShare entitled Sticky Teaching: Understanding What a Brain Can't Ignore . (Scroll to the bottom of the link to view the actual SlideShare.)

This is an appropriate complement to last week’s summary on brain myths many teachers believe.

This article focuses on ways to help ensure presentation of material sticks--within a brain that still contains many of the qualities needed for survival millions of years ago.

I am also linking another article the brain entitled Brain-Based Learning Techniques to Try in Your Classroom, which highlights three strategies to optimize learning:  frequent breaks from academics,  social-emotional learning’s complement to cognitive development, cognitive load theory, e.g., why phone numbers are seven digits long. 

Enjoy Halloween and remember to turn back the clocks Saturday night. (For me, that means an extra hour of sleep, for my kids, that means an extra hour of partying!)

Joe

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90% of what we now know to be true about the brain has been discovered in the last decade—but for the most part we’ve not changed how we teach.

The ABCs of Sticky Teaching

A: Awaken the Intrigue

B: Begin and End Often

C: Create Lots of Contrasts

D: Draw Them in with Stories

E: Emotion Drives Attention

F: Focus on the Big Idea

Why do these work?

Interrupts (starts and stops) make the brain check in: The reptilian brain checks to see if there’s any danger. When it discovers you’re boring, it checks out again.

Teach unpredictably but don’t quit the routines: Predictably reduces stress in the brain which helps it recover from other stress. Combined with repetition, it helps encode information faster.

The brain is wired for authentic stories: The brain is constantly trying to save your life. So everything else is competing with it. Stories build trust, which enables the brain to take a break.

The brain doesn’t need unnecessary details: When data is stored in the brain, only the “main thing” gets stored. Like reading headlines. So stick with the big idea and repeat it often.

Brain Myths

This week’s article summary is entitled 7 Common Neuromyths That Many Educators Believe.

I wasn’t familiar with all of the myths and even questioned the explanations of some others.

Yet the point of the article is that we as teachers need to become more knowledgeable of current brain research and cognitive science and less reliant on “neuroscience light”.

One of the most influential books I’ve read on cognitive science and education is Daniel Willingham’s Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Minds Works , which helped debunk a number of the myths below. 

A good book on the brain (although written more like a textbook) is David Souza's How the Brain Works. 

Joe

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Surveys of teachers reveal that many believe seven common myths about the brain, likely because the simple explanations are often attractive, even if totally wrong.

Right-brained/left-brained: 70% of teachers believe that a person is either ‘right-brained’ or ‘left-brained’. This popular neuromyth has been debunked by evidence from over 1,000 fMRI brain scans, which found no evidence people have either ‘right-brained’ or ‘left-brained’ personalities. Read on: Debunked: ‘Right-Brain’ and ‘Left-Brain’ Personalities

You only use 10% of your brain: 50% of teachers believe that people only use 10% of their brains. The idea that we only use 10% of our brains is probably such an enduring myth because it’s comforting to think we have spare capacity. Check out: 10% brain myth.

Sugar reduces attention: 50% of teachers think children become less attentive after consuming sugary snacks or drinks. This myth probably comes from weak links found in early research between sugar consumption and ADHD, yet the link still remains unproven, and at best weak.

Learning styles: 90% of teachers believe that students learn better if they are taught according to their preferred learning style, e.g., auditory, kinesthetic, visual. There is no neuroscientific evidence for this and no evidence that learning is improved by teaching to individual learning styles.

The shrinking brain: 25% of teachers believe that if people don’t drink six to eight glasses of water a day, their brains will shrink. Not true.

Exercise improves communication between brain hemispheres: 66% of teachers believe that short bouts of exercise improve communication between the brain’s hemispheres. There’s no evidence that exercise in this way can aid inter-hemispheric information transfer.

Critical period for learning: 33% of teachers believe that there are critical periods when certain types of learning must occur. This has a grain of truth, in that children are particularly sensitive to learning at certain periods. However, we can continue to learn, and our brains can change — so-called ‘plasticity’ — throughout our lives.

What is College Ready

This week’s article summary is from Education Reformers Don't Know What College Ready Means, written by a college professor of English.

While the attitudes and habits needed for success in his class are not that surprising, the article is a reminder that we—parents, teachers, other adults—can get caught up believing student preparation is solely about “content knowledge".

Of course, there is essential knowledge (skills, concepts, procedures) for every discipline. Yet just as important is shaping our students’ attitude toward school, learning, and life. 

My sister and I had very different educational experiences (I won’t go into the reasons why here). She went to a traditional public high school with about 4000 classmates while I went to a progressive private high school with 80 kids in my senior class. She did mostly rote work—worksheets, teacher-set assignments, multiple-choice tests, etc.—and I got to learn the habits listed below. My tests were only essay, and almost all classes were discussion-based. We both attended small liberal arts colleges. College for me was a breeze because I had developed the habits listed below. My private school experience was the most influential period of my life and the primary reason I became an educator (my first job and third teaching job was in the school I graduated from). My sister sadly has scant positive memories of high school and struggled initially in college because she didn’t have the habits below.

Joe

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These are the traits that are most important to success in college and life:

Curiosity: If I have a curious student, I have a student who will learn things simply because they want to know more about the things they are learning. Writing is the pursuit of answers to questions we ask ourselves, and the curious student is well-skilled at asking questions of the world.

Self-regulation: The freedom of college challenges many students who are used to the structures of high school, and the ones that can manage their own schedules, that can avoid the traps of procrastination and social-life temptations, are simply better prepared to do the work when the work comes.

Passion: It doesn’t much matter what the passion is, and it need not be academic. The only passion that doesn’t really help them in my class is a passion for getting good grades.

Empathy: Every one of my assignments is written to a specific rhetorical situation with a special audience with unique needs, attitudes, and knowledge. The ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes makes doing this significantly easier.

A healthy skepticism of authority: I ask students to join in an academic conversation that is almost certainly being conducted by people with superior credentials, who hold positions of cultural authority. If students aren’t willing to stick their noses into the discussion, they’ll never have anything original to contribute.

Boys and Girls and Conscientiousness

This week’s article summary is from Why Girls Tend to Get Better Grades Than Boys

Last year I sent out a number of article summaries on the different ways boys and girls learn and mature.

This article was interesting to me because it focuses on the new initiative in most schools to emphasize grit, self-regulation, and conscientiousness.

Boys on average come to these skills and habits later than girls.

Yet by the time many boys “mature”, they have already become disconnected from and turned off by school—note the article's disturbing statistic of today’s disparity between boys and girls entering college.

It is important for us to stress the importance of grit and self-regulation, yet we need to be cognizant that these habits and skills come later to boys than girls. 

Let's make sure that our expectations for boys in school is reasonable, appropriate, and gender-sensitive. 

Joe

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Across all grade levels and academic subjects, girls earn higher grades than boys. Not just in the United States, but across the globe, in countries as far afield as Norway and Hong Kong.

Reflected in a recent study, the findings are unquestionably robust: Girls earn higher grades in every subject, including the science-related fields where boys are thought to surpass them.

Less of a secret is the gender disparity in college enrollment rates. The latest data from the Pew Research Center shows that 71 percent of female high school graduates went on to college, compared to 61 percent of their male counterparts. In 1994 the figures were 63 and 61 percent, respectively.

Are schools set up to favor the way girls learn and trip up boys?     

Let’s start with kindergarten. Little ones who are destined to do well in a typical 21st century kindergarten class are those who manifest good self-regulation. This is a term that is bandied about a great deal these days by teachers and psychologists. It mostly refers to disciplined behaviors like raising one’s hand in class, waiting one’s turn, paying attention, listening to and following teachers’ instructions, and restraining oneself from blurting out answers. These skills are prerequisites for most academically oriented kindergarten classes in America—as well as basic prerequisites for success in life.

As it turns out, kindergarten-age girls have far better self-regulation than boys. A recent study reveals that boys are often a whole year behind girls in all areas of self-regulation. By the end of kindergarten, boys are often just beginning to acquire the self-regulatory skills with which girls had started the year.

This self-discipline edge for girls carries into middle-school and beyond. One study found that middle-school girls edge out boys in overall self-discipline. This contributes greatly to their better grades across all subjects. They found that girls are more adept at reading test instructions before proceeding to the questions, paying attention to a teacher rather than daydreaming, choosing homework over TV, and persisting on long-term assignments despite boredom and frustration. Girls are apt to start their homework earlier in the day than boys and spend almost double the amount of time completing it. Girls’ grade point averages across all subjects were higher than those of boys, even in basic and advanced math—which, again, are seen as traditional strongholds of boys.

Conscientiousness is uniformly considered by social scientists to be an inborn personality trait that is not evenly distributed across all humans. In fact, a host of cross-cultural studies show that females tend to be more conscientious than males. One such study found that female college students are far more likely than males to jot down detailed notes in class, transcribe what professors say more accurately, and remember lecture content better. Arguably, boys’ less developed conscientiousness leaves them at a disadvantage in school settings where grades heavily weight good organizational skills alongside demonstrations of acquired knowledge.
These days, the whole school experience seems to play right into most girls’ strengths—and most boys’ weaknesses. Gone are the days when you could blow off a series of homework assignments throughout the semester but pull through with a respectable grade by cramming for and acing that all-important mid-term exam. Getting good grades today is far more about keeping up with and producing quality homework—not to mention handing it in on time.

Girls succeed over boys in school because they tend to be more mastery-oriented in their schoolwork habits. They are more apt to plan ahead, set academic goals, and put effort into achieving those goals. They also are more likely than boys to feel intrinsically satisfied with the whole enterprise of organizing their work, and more invested in impressing themselves and their teachers with their efforts.

On the whole, boys approach schoolwork differently. They are more performance-oriented. Studying for and taking tests taps into their competitive instincts. For many boys, tests are quests that get their hearts pounding. Doing well on them is a public demonstration of excellence and an occasion for a high-five. In contrast, the stress many girls experience in test situations can artificially lower their performance, giving a false reading of their true abilities. The testing situation may underestimate girls’ abilities, but the classroom may underestimate boys’ abilities.

It is easy to for boys to feel alienated in an environment where homework and organization skills account for so much of their grades. But the educational tide may be turning in small ways that give boys more of a fighting chance. A number of schools’ grading policies have been revamped to furnish kids with two separate grades, one for good work habits and citizenship--a “life skills grade”, the other a  “knowledge grade” based on average scores across important tests. Tests could be retaken at any point in the semester, provided a student was up to date on homework.
Some schools have also stopped factoring homework into a kid’s grade. Homework was framed as practice for tests. Incomplete or tardy assignments were noted but didn’t lower a kid’s knowledge grade. The whole enterprise of severely downgrading kids for such transgressions as occasionally being late to class, blurting out answers, doodling instead of taking notes, having a messy backpack, poking the kid in front, or forgetting to have parents sign a permission slip for a class trip, is being revamped.

Disaffected boys may also benefit from a boot camp on test-taking, time-management, and study habits. These core skills are not always picked up by osmosis in the classroom, or from diligent parents at home.

Addressing the learning gap between boys and girls will require parents, teachers and school administrators to talk more openly about the ways each gender approaches classroom learning—and that difference itself remains a tender topic.