Tag Archive for: Cognitive Capacity

Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind

Engaging-Students-Poverty- Brain Based In this galvanizing follow-up to the best-selling Teaching with Poverty in Mind, Eric Jensen digs deeper into engagement as the key factor in the academic success of economically disadvantaged students. Drawing from research, experience, and real school success stories, Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind reveals:

  • Smart, purposeful engagement strategies that all teachers can use to expand students’ cognitive capacity, increase motivation and effort, and build deep, enduring understanding of content.
  • The (until-now) unwritten rules for engagement that are essential for increasing student achievement.
  • How automating engagement in the classroom can help teachers use instructional time more effectively and empower students to take ownership of their learning.
  • Steps you can take to create an exciting yet realistic implementation plan.

Too many of our most vulnerable students are tuning out and dropping out because of our failure to engage them. It’s time to set the bar higher. Until we make school the best part of every student’s day, we will struggle with attendance, achievement, and graduation rates.

This timely resource will help you take immediate action to revitalize and enrich your practice so that all your students may thrive in school and beyond. In Eric’s latest book, he shares student engagement strategies that are strongly tied to socioeconomic status. Learn the seven factors that are crucial to engaging disadvantaged students: health and nutrition, vocabulary, effort and energy, mind-set, cognitive capacity, relationships, and stress level. To address those factors, Jensen provides actions and solutions you can use in every day practice to:

  • Cultivate a high-energy and positive classroom climate that fosters success every day.
  • Build your students’ capacity to focus their attention, think critically, process content, and recall it from memory.
  • Create greater excitement that spurs student motivation and effort.
  • Develop students’ deep, sustained understanding of content.

The strategies in this book will empower you to automate student engagement efforts in your classroom and school so more struggling students succeed. You can get it at Amazon by clicking here.

How to Avoid Alzheimer’s Disease

cognitive decline

“7 Ways You Can Prevent Or Reduce the Effects of Cognitive Decline (including Alzheimer’s)”

Let’s focus on how to prevent or reduce the effects of cognitive decline. This issue may apply to a family member, or even yourself. After all, every 68 seconds another American is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and it’s a cold, cruel way to die.

When our thinking and memory capacity becomes diminished (by a stroke, trauma, aging or Alzheimer’s) we begin to lose our sense of self and we frustrate those around us. The good news is that there are some well-researched approaches that can make dramatic differences in brain health. The first thing you can do is… Read more

Over Half of all Teachers Make These 2 Mistakes.

Brain based teacherWe could focus on all the “holiday” stuff (like how to help you “navigate the holidays without adding inches to your figure”), but it’s the school year and we turn to how to affect one of the “Big Four.”

The first mistake (over 50% of all teachers make) is selling yourself short. You have far more influence than you think. The “Big Four” in teaching are: effort, behavior, cognitive capacity and attitude. When you strengthen these four, your students improve dramatically. The good news is that every one of these is teachable.

I’ll illuminate just one way you can influence a student’s attitude. The second mistake (over 50% of all teachers make) is to talk about a student’s “attitude” as if it was a fixed entity. Attitude is NOT fixed. In fact, new research shows how much teachers can influence a student’s attitude. For example… Read more

7 Ways You Can Prevent Or Reduce the Effects of Cognitive Decline (including Alzheimer’s)

prevention

Next month, we’ll get back to the brain and schools. But, during June and July we focus on your personal world. Last month, we focused on “7 Things You Can Do to Prevent Cancer”. This month, we’ll focus on how to prevent or reduce the effects of cognitive decline. This issue may apply to a family member or even yourself. After all, every 68 seconds, another American is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and it’s a cold, cruel way to die.

When our thinking and memory capacity becomes diminished (by a stroke, trauma, aging or Alzheimer’s) we begin to lose our sense of self and we frustrate those around us.  The good news is that there are some well-researched approaches that can make dramatic differences in brain health. The first thing you can do is…. Read more