Brain-based Learning

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Brain-based Learning

• Brain-based education is best understood in three
  words engagement, strategies, and principles.
  Brain-based education is the "engagement of
  strategies based on principles derived from an
  understanding of the brain."

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Brain-Based Learning

• Taking what we know about the brain, about
  development and about learning and combining
  those factors in intelligent ways to connect and
  excite students desire to learn.
• Combining emotional, factual and skill knowledge
  into a cognitive tool.

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Memory/Learning

• We have at least two ways of organizing memory.
• Learning means that information is related and
  connected to the learner. If it's not, you have
  memorization, but you don't have learning. There
  are still things we have to memorize, things that
  need to be repeated.

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Spatial Memory

• The spatial memory system (or autobiographical
  system) does not need rehearsal and allows for
  instant memory of experiences.
• We understand and remember best when facts and
  skills are embedded in natural, spatial memory.
• Spatial memory is generally best invoked through
  experiential learning.

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Rote Memory

• The counterpart of the spatial memory system is a
  set of systems designed for storing relatively
  unrelated information.
• This is the model schools are based on. We have
  limited education to "programming" these systems
  and "teaching to the test." Can you see why
  people would say that our educational system is
  based on teaching to the test (and forgetting it
  afterwards) is not very successful?

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Memory

• Short-term memory
• TO HELP
• Combine or chunk
• Recognition
• Long-term memory
• Declarative - Factual
• Episodic - Events or experiences
• Semantic - Words
• Procedural - Step by step

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Memory

• When objects and events are registered by several
  senses, they can be stored in several
  interrelated memory networks.
• This type of memory becomes more accessible and
  powerful.
• Conversation helps us link ideas/thoughts to our
  own related memories. Students need time for this
  to happen!!

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What You See is What You Get!
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Learning is developmental.

• Depending upon the topic some students can think
  abstractly, while others have a limited
  background and are still thinking on a concrete
  level.
• Building the necessary neural connections by
  exposure, repetition, and practice is important
  to the student.

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Learning Is Developmental

• Our experiences stimulate neural development,
  creating a thick forest of branch-like neural
  connections.
• Because of our experiences, our brains actually
  become denser providing greater capacity for new
  and deeper understanding.

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Learning Process
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Learning Strategies

• The solution is to embed learning by immersing
  learners in well-orchestrated, life-like,
  low-threat, high-challenge learning environments.
  
• We need to take the information off the
  blackboard, to make it come alive in the minds of
  learners, and to help them to make connections
  through
• Storytelling Conversations
• Debates Role playing
• Simulations Songs
• Games Films

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Continue

• Show them the BIG picture.
• Provide challenging assignments that really
  matter.
• Balance clearly delegated assignments with some
  freedom and flexibility or choice in assignments.

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Continue

• The brain develops better in concert with others.
• When students have to talk to others about
  information, they retain the information longer
  and more efficiently!
• Make use of small groups, discussions, teams,
  pairings, and question and answer situations.

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Learning Styles

• Take a looks at learning styles and unique ways
  of patterning.
• We have many things in common, but we also are
  very, very different.
• We need to understand how we learn and how we
  perceive the world and to know that we see the
  world differently.

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Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and
inhibited by threat.

• Tie learning to prior knowledge.
• Use Know - Want to know - Learned cycle.
• (What the Best College Teachers Do) suggests
  working from big questions to be answered.

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Learning

• The brains priority is always survival - at the
  expense of higher order thinking.
• Stress should be kept to a manageable level
• Provide opportunities to grow and to make
  changes.
• Have high, but reasonable expectations.

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Threat

• In the classroom, "downshifting" is seen as
  threat related to a sense of helplessness.
• It has implications for testing and for grading,
  for the notion of the teacher as the controller,
  for empowerment, for performance objectives.

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Uniquely Organized

• Every brain is uniquely organized.
• We all have the same set of systems, but they
  are integrated differently in every brain.
•  

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Our Unique Brain

• We are products of genetics and experience.
• The brain works better when facts and skills are
  embedded in real experiences.

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The Brain
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• LEARNING IS A DELICATE, BUT IS A POWERFUL
  DIALOGUE BETWEEN GENETICS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
  Robert Sylwester, A