Tag Archive for: Classroom Instruction

Extreme Schools: Miracles Happen Every Day

Roosevelt Elementary School

Our featured “Extreme School” is…Well, let a staff member tell her story…

“We needed help; our socio-economically deprived children were not progressing as we wished that they would. About 77% of our students are served by free lunch and free breakfast, and we knew that those students specifically needed to be able to read to realize their maximum success.

Many people thought that this school out in the rural cotton fields probably could not do much differently or much better. After all, we serve the local Children’s Home and the local Boys’ Ranch. These students also had some stumbling blocks in their way toward success.”

What did they do and how did it turn out? Read more

Limitations of Brain-based Learning


Nothing is perfect. Limitations of brain-based learning do exist.  No one process or paradigm can solve ALL of the problems in education. The brain itself has limitations, and all of us are part of the process. They are no more difficult than the limitations you find in any other teaching and learning situation. It will take exposure, awareness, skill-building, and time to become adept. But it can be learned in a fun and supportive way.

You can learn the skills and strategies to control how well your students learn.

What is brain-based learning?

Brain-based learning is a new paradigm in teaching that integrates instruction with the optimal method in which the brain learns and stores information. If there weren’t limitations of brain-based learning, as with all learning, then everyone could potentially know everything there is to know.

To understand what it is all about, it is the:

  1. engagement of,
  2. strategies based on, and
  3. principles of how our brain works.

Although brain-based learning takes into consideration the way the brain best retains information, it also is subject to its flaws and weaknesses. The human brain is not optimally designed, nor did it evolve for the purposes of formalized classroom instruction. Thus, there truly are limitations of brain-based learning because it takes people (like you) to implement it and we all have limits on our time and resources.

Here are a couple of examples of limits in a classroom. Read more