INTERACTIVE MOTIVATE COMMUNICATE KNOWLEDGE POSITIVE UNDERSTANDING ANALYSIS MANAGEMENT STUDENTS DISCUSSION LEARNING BRAIN COMMUNICATE BRAIN PLAN

POSITIVE

Great Teaching
TEACHERS

SUCCESS FULL

Joanna Brown

TEACHERS MOTIVATE STUDENTS STRATEGIES FACILITATE DEVELOP STRATEGIES

DISCUSSION

UNDERSTANDING KNOWLEDGE POSITIVE ATTITUDE CLASSES COMMUNICATE COMPREHENSION MEMORY PLAN ABILITY EVALUATION EVALUATION CLASSES TEACHING BRAIN MEMORY FACILITATEDISCUSSION ATTITUDE LEARNING SUCCESSFUL BRAIN STUDENTS TEACHING DEVELOP FACILITATEINTERACTIVE MANAGEMENT

Key Essentials of the toolkit! A positive attitude to pupil learning

Successful implementation of A Curriculum for Excellence requires teachers to adapt teaching practice to meet pupils needs. Initiatives in areas such as Assessment, is for Learning which minimizes disruptive and disengaged behavior. This helps teachers maintain a consistent focus on pupil learning, internalizing accountability for every learner. Such clear strategy and good leadership -creates a culture where staff feel supported and valued as they deliver the curriculum in new ways, supported by creative and relevant CPD.

An ability to communicate value to pupils

Pupils learn best when they understand the value of their learning. Studies of pupils views of what makes a good teacher reinforce this they interpret the curriculum in a way that makes sense, and deliver content that takes pupils interests and contexts into account. Therefore as a teacher, one must apply the content to be shared in a more interestingly commutable way.

Good content knowledge and understanding

Teachers must have good knowledge of the relevant content and curriculum areas. Strategies should engage teachers in reflection on how practice could change, and what the implications are for how children learn. Along with having content knowledge, good teachers must use

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evidence to improve learning. A teachers understanding of good practice, using a range of approaches such as classroom observation records, research digests, online seminars, case studies and selfevaluation tools is ideal for good education.

A teaching repertoire of many ways to impart content

Teachers must develop enhanced expertise in teaching practices, learning new skills and increasing knowledge. All teachers must analyze their practice and reflect on how they help young people cultivate knowledge and skill to improve their own work and develop higher order learning To achieve this, teachers must know, understand and take account of childrens learning styles, and this presents a rich area for professional development activity.

Knowledge and understanding of connections across curricular areas

A Curriculum for Excellence invites innovative approaches to interdisciplinary work. While many schools already have excellent practice in creating connections, it is a significant area for development for many teachers, particularly in secondary section. Implicit in A Curriculum for Excellence is the need to move from delivering subject content to pupils, towards developing ways to pass ownership of the learning to them.

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In the midst of the worldwide psycho-neurological revolution, knowledge about the brain and learning is exploding. Memory is a vital part of learning. For this reason, the shift to student-centered learning is crucial. Activities such as rhyming and rhythm, physical movement, multi-modality input, hands-on lessons, discussion, participatory experiences, constructivism, emotional experiences, personal meaning, and relevance, must become an integral part of every teachers daily lessons. Teachers dont need to wait until new brainmind research reaches down to practical teaching, here are the KEY FACTS teachers can usenow. ! Learning is personal. Learning is a private individual experience that must be internalized and integrated by each individual.When teachers present to the class, each student must adapt and apply the lesson to his/her own existing knowledge. This is the reason for pairing, small groups, and interactive activities. Teachers can provide lessons that students must then personalize to make lessons individually meaningful. Every bit of knowledge that each student possesses must have meaning that relates to other meaningful knowledge s/he possesses. Each student has millions of bits of information available to him/her, but each can only focus on a little at a time and associate it with his/her existing information ! Classes do not learn. Only individuals learn. They can learn individually while being a part of a class, but the group does not learn. If 57% of the members of a class learn something, we may refer to the group saying, They learned it. But, they didnt learn it. Each class member either did or did not learn it. It is the individual differences in students, their prior knowledge, and interest levels that makes teaching-learning difficult. The more knowledge and interest a student has in the lesson, the easier it is to learn, understand, remember, associate, recall, and build on. Group engagement is not sufficient; any student not engaged cannot be learning and is probably engaged is something else. ! Learning is constructed. Each learner builds and adds to

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understanding according to his or her own knowledge, thoughts, ideas, perceptions, experiences, understanding, values, predisposition and beliefs. If new information does not fit, connect, or relate to existing knowledge the brain will not accept it. .That is the reason why teachers must involve kids and utilize their feedback. Each learner must use his or her own thinking to get it to fit. Students learn more answering their own questions of why than by having someone else give them reasons why. ! Learning is meaningful. The 'why' is more important than the 'what' in learning. New knowledge must connect to previously learned, relevant, meaningful experiences and knowledge. Learning relevant information is natural, effortless, and long-lasting. Lack of meaning is the reason for difficulty in studying for and passing tests. We do not learn isolated facts except by rote memorization. It is not possible to learn nonsense except by relating it to already stored learning using pneumonic or memory gimmicks. ! Learning is interactive. Knowledge requires understanding. Understanding requires doing something with that knowledge. It requires using it; use it or lose it, is the motto. Interacting will almost certainly make it both meaningful and lasting for all students participating in the class interaction. Pairing and small group discussions are crucial to important learning in school. If its worth learning; its worth remembering. ! Learning is emotional. It involves feelings, attitudes, and the whole-child. Emotions drive learning. We learn what we feel strongly about. And, we learn it in direct proportion to the strength of our feelingsespecially our like and dislike feelings. This is why information about our hobbies and special interests are learned so quickly and easily. It is why a baseball lover can recite players names and records, past games, averages and statistics with minutia of endless trivia. Emotions are why we remember the boy or girl who sat behind us in the seventh grade, but cant remember the name of someone we met yesterday. The moral: Get emotional

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in your teaching. ! Learning occurs in the brain. Every cell in the body from the skin to the muscles can receive information that contributes to learning, but it all goes through the brain. Our skin, the bodys largest organ, receives stimuli constantly; from the corn on our little toe, to the tight belt, to the air conditioner blowing on the back of our neck. The more neurons that are affected by stimuli coming in from many sources, the stronger and longer lasting the memory and recall ability will be. We do not learn by heart, as some think, or by kidneywe learn by brain. It is by stimuli, and, the more and greater the variety of stimuli, the better it is for remembering. ! Learning is a social activity. We learn from the company we keep. What we value in learning depends on what those around us are learning. Teenagers walk, talk, dress like each other. They change their music, hair style, language, slang constantly to separate themselves from other groups; and they copy the behaviors of those in their own group, meticulously. Learning is very closely related to socialization with the subcultures to which kids relate or identify. Some common subcultures of schools are known as eggheads, nerds, geeks, preppies, rah-rahs jocks, jerks, thugs, dopers, and freaks. Teachers see transfer students enter school and within minutes easily find and relate to students of his or her type. ! Learning is predictable. Learning follows laws, patterns, and procedures. The laws apply to attention, remembering, retrieval, and forgetting. We already know what turns kids on; what gets their attention what gets them excited, interested, and motivated; and what their reaction will be to certain activities. This is the reason that teachers have intuitively learned to utilize kids interest in holidays, sports, and extra curricular activities as motivation to learn. Teachers can learn to use their intuition and their own personal action research to make better connections with student intereststhe most predictable precursor for natural learning.

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! Memory is largely an associative process. The brain works by linking things to other things. Memory relies on patterns, concepts, meaningfulness, relevance and associations. When we relate new information to that already in our long-range memory by such means as similes, metaphors, examples, it can become instantly memorable. For example, to relate parallel lines to the sides of a doorway, or edges of a sheet of paper; or to compare fractions to slicing of a pie has obvious associative value. Better yet, getting kids to find similes, metaphors, and examples is ideal. ! Conceptual Learning is a spontaneous learning that we do naturally, effortlessly and unconsciously. Concepts have the association and meaningfulness that helps learning and memory occur naturally. Once kids see the concept, most everything else fits in automatically. Teachers who teach the concept early in a lesson, or let kids discover concepts for themselves, find that interest, memorization, and relevance come automatically. Civil war is a topic conflict is a concept. Planets is a topic systems is a concept. Equations is a topic balance or equality is a conceptfractions is a topicaccurate measurement or representation of a part of a whole is the concept. ! Learning that utilizes higher level thinking effortlessly goes into our long-term memory. By better understanding the importance of thinking in relation to learning, teachers can utilize Blooms Taxonomy of thinking levels. The taxonomy should also be taught to students so they can identify and apply higher levels of thinking for themselves.
The taxonomy is usually shown in ascending order of difficulty. 1. Knowledge (remembering facts, lists, names) 2. Comprehension (understanding, getting meaning) 3. Application (solving, using, applying) 4. Analysis (deduction, logic, induction, reasoning)

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5. Synthesis (creating, combining, originating, divergence) 6. Evaluation (judging, selecting, determining importance) The easiest lessons to teach are the hardest to learn. One of the most difficult tasks for a student is memorization of factsLevel-One in the hierarchy of thinking levels. Unfortunately, one of the easiest lessons to teachers to present, organize, sequence, and evaluate is the hardest for kids to learn and remember. John Goodlad, in his three year research involving more than a 1000 teachers, says that 95% of teaching and testing in classes is done at Level-One thinkingeasiest to teach, most difficult to learn. When facts are put in meaningful groups or concepts, theyre more easily learned. Teachers, who understand the way kids brains utilize their classroom experiences in a better way, can be even more effective in improving student achievement, can reach and teach all students, and can find more satisfaction in involving the kids in student-centered teaching and learning.

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