1. Constantly make something important to their brain (say, “Wow, this is so good that…” Or, “If you learn nothing else all day, listen closely and remember this…”)
2. Get students out of their seats for a quick energizer every 8-15 minutes (it bumps up Cortisol, Dopamine and Norepinephrine, all of which help strengthen memory formation)
3. Every single key idea, repeat after me (“Now we just learned there are four seasons. How many seasons are there?”)
4. Use acronyms
5. Use priming ALL Day long (“Earlier I said we have 4 seasons and the coldest one is W-I-N________?”) They spell out the rest of the word.
6. Use partners more often. (“We just learned the four seasons. Now, please stand up. Great. Find a neighbor and point to him or her say, “You’re it!. Great. Now, between you and your neighbor, see if you can remember all four seasons.”) Then do error correction.
7. Use their body more often, like every 15-30 minutes to connect with content. (“We just learned the four seasons. Now, let’s burn them into our brain in a fun way. Please stand up. Great. With your body, show your neighbor, you wiping sweat off your forehead. That’s summer. Great. Now show your neighbor raking up leaves. That’s fall. Etc.”)
8. Put key ideas up on posters around the room. Ask kids to stand up, find a partner and take them to the poster. Then they review the material using the poster as a helper.
9. Use peg systems
10. Use spatial learning and associate concepts to places in the room. Take a key idea like cumulus clouds and go to a corner of the room with the kids. Ask them to look up in the corner and imaging HUGE rain clouds in the ceiling corner. Imaging the rain. Repeat after me: “Cumulous clouds means.. rain (or whatever).”
Knowing these are good. Actually doing them-all day long, every day of the week, is how you get miracles.
Make it happen.
photo credit: Justin Shearer
“There’s a big front coming in this weekend. Expect temperatures to drop to well below freezing. There will be icy and dangerous conditions. Winds will be near gale force. Please take all necessary cautions to protect life and property.”
Sometimes being right is just as bad as being wrong. Just ask any weatherman or weatherperson. Nobody likes to hear the messenger when the news is bad. It’s no different when the news is about our own lives.
Today, we take a look ahead. That’s always a bit dangerous. Today’s world has so many complex variables that any predictions beyond the next few weeks seem far too tenuous to “bank on.” Who would have predicted interest rates would fall to record lows in 2011? Few would have predicted the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, which set back the space program by years (and maybe put it out of business). The events following 9/11 changed many things in politics, economics and even tourism. The point here is simple; general timelines are easier to predict, high impact events are, well, unpredictable. We’ll have to exclude in this chapter those catastrophic events (sorry, even psychics get them wrong) and stick with the likely stream of events. Based on the trends so far, there are three possible trajectories. One is the nightmare, where all that can go bad, does. Another is the dream, where most important decisions and events are positive. And finally, there’s the most likely scenario of all. That I’ll leave to the end. (more…)
In September, I shared the research that told you that feedback was the top achievement-boosting variable. in learning. This month, we’ll tie together some brain research and student achievement data to reveal the most VISIBLE ingredient in better teaching.
First, the hint: It is consistently correlated with high achievement gains and it is one of the single biggest variables in teacher quality.
For years, realtors have tried to help sell prospective home buyers on the neighborhood with “good schools.” You may have had parents that fixate on picking the right school for their child. But the research shows it matters far more which teacher the child gets.
Teachers had THREE times as much influence on students’ academic development as the school they attended.
Many of the factors commonly assumed to be important to teachers’ effectiveness are NOT causal or even strongly correlated with student achievement. Although teachers are paid more for experience, education and training, those are not a guarantee of better student performance. (more…)
There’s a revolution taking place throughout education… a revolution sparked by the explosion of new knowledge about the human brain and our practical, urgent need to gain cutting edge, paradigm-rocking teaching survival skills for this new century. Now is your chance to be part of a rare event that brings together the worlds top experts on learning, the human brain, educational innovation, and you get to be there!
That’s right. At Jensen Learning, we were the originators of the Learning Brain EXPO, and to our delight, other Brain EXPOs have popped up around the world. Now the first Hong Kong Mind/Brain EXPO is coming up we are excited to be a part of it!
Click here to register for the first Hong Kong Mind/Brain EXPO
How to Tell if it’s For You
You should attend… if you’re interested in the powerful impact and practical applications of brain research on learning, teaching, training, and education. The Expo is particularly valuable for:
Can You Find Your Area of Interest Below?
Our speaker list is highlighted by the always-popular maverick psychiatrist Daniel Amen. Amen is the author of many best-sellers, and a true pioneer in brain imaging. His sessions sell out every single time. Join the EXPO to find out his latest research on maximizing your brain health. This is critical, cutting-edge information for you AND your loved ones!
Learn how to revolutionize your teaching and learning – and make it a place of learning, discovery, collaboration, excitement, and positive transformation, with brain-compatible pioneer, the original and legendary Eric Jensen. He’s written 26 books and he will show how you turn your classroom or school into a brain-compatible event that excites students every day.
But there’s more…
You’ll get a chance to hear the legendary Art Costa, founder of the Thinking Skills movement and Cognitive Coaching movement. He is a legend and you’ll get a rare chance to hear him before it’s too late. (more…)
Every now and then I do a survey. For example, five months ago we did a survey to find out what you thought about lesson planning. Two great things came from the survey. First, we learned a great deal from your thoughtful comments. We used your comments to put together something amazing for each of you. Therefore, the second goodie is that, although only one person (Ginna Myers) won the grand prize, everyone has won something of great value.
In fact, it might be the single most important gift I could ever give you… and it’s FREE (free is good)!
For years, I have pushed a more thoughtful approach to teaching that combines the power of emotions, movement, music and the development of cognitive capacity. But the challenge to use a more brain-based approach is in the proper planning, sequencing and execution of the processes.
Why is this planning so important?
If you’re doing the wrong thing in teaching, kids lose out and either they don’t change or they change for the worse. Kids can change more quickly than you ever thought. A recent study at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive Thinking by Dr. Draganski and colleagues stated, “…we demonstrate significant gray matter volume increases in frontal and parietal brain areas following only two sessions of practice…” (Taubert, et al. 2010).
This is crazy good!
This stunning discovery that our brain can actually change its shape within days or weeks in response to certain mental and physical stimuli is dramatically different from the “old school” fixed mindset that change happened after months or years (or, not at all.) We now know that just doing complex thinking can literally add gray mass to the brain (Aydin, K., et al. 2007). But how do we get kids to be doing the complex thinking required for high performance learning? (more…)
What should your priorities be this year? From a personal standpoint, managing your health through good food, exercise, and stress management are pretty smart paths to follow. After all, if you’re not at your best, both you and your students miss out.
From a professional standpoint, ensuring that students become strong learners should be a top priority.
Since you don’t have time for every idea on earth, what factors will support your student’s growth the most? For now, we’ll focus on just one of the top five factors that drive student achievement. The study we draw from is grounded in work from several thousand teachers, so the sample size is impressive.
Focusing on what matters most is one sure way to “disaster-proof” your teaching.
A human being is born less able to cope on its own than any other mammal. However, this provides the brain with extraordinary flexibility to adapt to its environment. The method it uses is a monster’s appetite for environmental adaption based on experience. Yet, I’ve always said that our brain is primarily a “gist processor.” That means that we are more interested in being effective (goal acquisition) than we are being efficient, being a deep thinker, or knowing a lot of background. In the classroom, this means that most kids (unless we shape their brains differently) would much rather get quirky headlines, YouTube clips, and do activities all day.
To become effective, the brain relies on an exquisite collection of feedback processors. (more…)
Myth: IQ Cannot Be Changed… Students are Fixed the Way They Are
Completely false! Brains can change! In fact, the worse students are academically, the greater the upside. There are no credible studies (yet) of raising IQ in kids with high IQ already. But many, many studies show that kids with an IQ in the 70-100 range can have it raised. In study after study, we find that every single component of intelligence can be raised.
In one study (Mackey, et al., 2011) children aged 7 to 9 from poverty participated in one of two cognitive training programs for 60 minutes/day and 2 days/week, for a total of 8 weeks. Children in the reasoning group improved substantially (an average increase of 10 points in Performance IQ.) By contrast, children in the speed group improved substantially in different areas. Counter to widespread mythology, these results indicate that both fluid reasoning and processing speed are modifiable by purposeful training.
What about kids from poverty; can you raise their IQ? Yes, you can. In fact, among the poor, the heritability of IQ is far less than among middle and upper income students. The heritability of IQ among kids from low-income families from their parents is less than 10%. It’s over 60% for middle and upper income families. In other words, don’t blame the parents for a poor child’s low school performance. Before age four, the caregivers ARE the dominant influence. But once in kindergarten, school is the dominant influence.
Kids will spend nearly 13,000 hours in school from K-12. This means the IQ of the parents of poor kids is less of a factor than the environment you create at school. That’s right; it means your staff has NO excuses for students to underperform. (more…)
Eric Jensen was asked how to for his perspective on motivation in the classroom… his answer is found in the video below.
Learn How You Can Cope in a World Packed with Unpredictability
In every city and state I visit lately, there’s the smell of something burning in the air. No, it’s not the usual summer brush fires. It’s the slashing and burning of city, county, state and federal budgets. It is common to hear of 5-15% of staff being given the dreaded equivalent of the “You’re fired, here’s your pink slip”. The stress levels are off the charts and there’s anger, denial and resentment. If this applies to you or your colleagues, lean in and read closely. If it does not apply to you today, it may apply in the near future.
Usually this newsletter is for teaching tips. For the next couple of months, let’s take the opportunity to look after you. There are some very brain-smart coping strategies to help you and your colleagues deal with these issues. One of them comes from a zebra.
The others are…
Most teachers define stress as, “I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I know when it happens and what it feels like.” Stress researchers define it as a mind and body reaction to adverse stimuli resulting from a perception of a loss of control (Kim and Diamond 2002). This suggests that stress embodies both the stimulus and the resulting reaction in our body.
In short, the stress in our life is not “out there.” There are no stressful jobs, no stressful people, nor any stressful situations. There is a very real response in you. But if you tell yourself a job is stressful or a person is stressful, your life will always be miserable. You have more “say-so” over your life than you think.
There are typically three ways we feel stress: the good stress (e.g. excitement, challenge, novelty), the intense stress known as acute (which is draining or even traumatic) and the ongoing and unforgiving stress known as chronic. The last two categories of stress are evil for the brain.
Why is that? (more…)
Let’s explore how you can boost test scores by making small interventions and simple changes at the last moment.
First, a simple disclaimer: I don’t support 95% of all the testing being done on kids. I love accountability, but not crazy-making testing that gives self-serving data; data that helps you do better on the next test, instead of in real life where the tests should be targeting. Having said that, things are what they are. Let’s focus on the here and now.
Here is a plan that will help you maximize testing for your students.
Research: Recent Discovery on Testing
You have only five variables you can tweak in the days, hours and minutes before the actual test time. The biggest variable is how well kids have learned what will be on the test. If you haven’t taken care of that variable all year long, you have fewer options. It’s too late to add much content when you get real close to test time.
The single best thing you can do in the weeks and days before the testing is…have students take tests. Testing produced better overall recall than did restudying (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). Give them small chunks of “mock tests” that will mimic the real ones. But the research gets a bit more complicated from here out.
What about getting feedback on the mock tests?
When tests are NOT accompanied by feedback, some items (i.e., those that were not correctly retrieved) might not benefit from testing (Pashler et al., 2005).
This tells you feedback has two sides: if you get it wrong, you NEED feedback. If it’s right, it’s less important to get feedback.
The debriefing should begin as a social event with the teacher and classmates involved. Then shift it to a personal assignment. Let students improve their “mock” test cores with a reflective test analysis. Here, students write about each question they got wrong: 1) what was their approach, 2) how they came up with the wrong answer, and 3) what they would do differently next time. Give students partial credit for each debriefed corrected answer. This empowers students by helping them become more thoughtful tests takers and reduces their stress by putting more of the process in their control.
Read carefully to what a team of cognitive psychologists says;
“Information that has been tested will be remembered better over time than information that has been restudied. This test-induced benefit is apparently stronger when repeated tests over the same information are provided. These results suggest that tests should be utilized often in educational contexts to maximize retention of information over long time periods.” (Carpenter, et al., 2008, page 446).
Encourage (even mandate) the asking of questions in the weeks and days leading up to the test. Students who are struggling academically are rarely asking the most questions in class. Researchers have found that low-achieving students are often the most reluctant to seek assistance and that a negative or fearful perception of “help seeking” is to blame (Ryan, et al. 1998).
The Ryan study involved 500 students and 25 teachers in 63 sixth-grade math classes throughout 10 Michigan middle schools. The researchers found that low-achieving students tend to perceive question asking as a sign of inability and associate it with feeling “dumb.” Conversely, high achievers with greater confidence are less likely to worry about what others think and tend to focus on the benefits of seeking help, notes the study.
Advise learners to take inventory of their projected goals, time-management skills, and study habits; and to reorganize them appropriately. Students who give their academic concerns top priority and allow ample time for studying (including exam preparation) often perform best (Yaworski, 1998). If help is needed in establishing a personal study schedule, or if chronic procrastination persists, encourage learners to seek the advice of a guidance counselor or related professional.
Next, in the days coming up to the testing, students often get stressed (the teachers are, of course, totally relaxed!)
The three best ways to get kids more relaxed are each about control (it’s the counterbalance to stress.) First, help them take more control over the process of making choices for when, what type of, and where to prepare. (You pre-select the options.) For example, let them choose which content sections they want to prep for first. Second, teach them self-regulation strategies such as slow deep breathing to relax. Third, teach them how to reframe the testing experience, to help them be more in charge of it. Tell your students, “Tests are a school’s way to assess their schooling success. We want to find out what we’re doing well and what we need to do differently. The tests tell us what changes we can make to develop your brain as best as possible.” (more…)
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