Six things to know about your brain to become an expert. Enjoying the process of Learning. Details Created on Monday, 23 January 2012 18:38 Written by Karen Green Karen Green, from Lyons Hall Primary School in Essex, England, shares her experience, tips and classroom activities to teach the growth mindset I’m a primary school teacher at Lyons Hall Primary School, where I teach sixth grade students. We had introduced the growth mindset in school, so students were already familiar with the language of it. For instance, they already understood the importance of resilience, determination and perseverance, which, in their own words sounded like: “keep trying,” “do your best,” and “never give up.”
Before shifting to a senior school, we wanted to make sure that the 6th graders had a deeper understanding of themselves as learners, so they could build their own autonomy to change and gain confidence in their academic abilities. My colleagues and I had explored ways to introduce these concepts, and one method we came across was Brainology. How Does the Brain Learn Best? Smart Studying Strategies. In his new book, “How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why It Happens,” author Benedict Carey informs us that “most of our instincts about learning are misplaced, incomplete, or flat wrong” and “rooted more in superstition than in science.” That’s a disconcerting message, and hard to believe at first.
But it’s also unexpectedly liberating, because Carey further explains that many things we think of as detractors from learning — like forgetting, distractions, interruptions or sleeping rather than hitting the books — aren’t necessarily bad after all. They can actually work in your favor, according to a body of research that offers surprising insights and simple, doable strategies for learning more effectively. Society has ingrained in us “a monkish conception of what learning is, of you sitting with your books in your cell,” Carey told MindShift. “How We Learn” presents a new view that takes some of the pressure off. Getting to Know Your Brain’s Memory Processes. Students Aren't Getting Enough Sleep—School Starts Too Early. As the lazy days of summer give way to the painful reality of pre-dawn alarms, many kids are beginning their descent into chronic school-year sleep deprivation. The median school start time in this country is 8 a.m. But this fall, some schools, including a handful of elementary schools in New York City, will ring their first bell up to 40 minutes earlier than they did last year in order to accommodate curricular demands.
These early school start times result in sleepy kids and frustrated parents. But, as of Monday, those kids and parents have the formidable weight of the American Academy of Pediatrics on their side. “The empirical evidence [of] the negative repercussions of chronic sleep loss on health, safety and performance in adolescents … has been steadily mounting for over the past decade,” wrote Judith Owens, a pediatrician and the lead author of the report, in an email. According to the Academy, the solution is to delay school start times. New Research: Students Benefit from Learning That Intelligence Is Not Fixed. Arten Popov Teaching students that intelligence can grow and blossom with effort – rather than being a fixed trait they’re just born with – is gaining traction in progressive education circles.
And new research from Stanford is helping to build the case that nurturing a “growth mindset” can help many kids understand their true potential. The new research involves larger, more rigorous field trials that provide some of the first evidence that the social psychology strategy can be effective when implemented in schools on a wide scale. Even a one-time, 30-minute online intervention can spur academic gains for many students, particularly those with poor grades. The premise is that these positive effects can stick over years, leading for example to higher graduation rates; but long-term data is still needed to confirm that. However, all the original intervention studies were small and left some educators and policymakers unconvinced. A Light Touch Leads to Meaningful Change. How to Debug Your Brain and Build Better Habits. How Google Impacts The Way Students Think.
How Google Impacts The Way Students Think by Terry Heick It’s always revealing to watch learners research. When trying to understand complex questions often as part of multi-step projects, they often simply “Google it.” Why do people migrate? Google it. Where does inspiration come from? How do different cultures view humanity differently? Literally Google it. And you see knowledge as searchable, even though that’s not how it works. 1. Google is powerful, the result of a complicated algorithm that attempts to index human thought that has been digitally manifest.
The result? 2. When students are looking for an “answer,” good fortune sees them arrive at whatever they think they’re looking for, where they can (hopefully) evaluate the quality and relevance of the information, cite their source, and be on their merry way. But with the cold logistics of software, having come what they were looking for, learners are left with the back-button, a link on the page they’re on, or a fresh browser tab.
Why Each Year Seems to Disappear More Quickly Than the Last. For most people, each passing month of their lives seems to feel shorter than the previous. Many of us can’t believe that stores are already starting to display Christmas products, and if you’re writing a check, you might still catch yourself writing 2013 when 2014 is nearly over. All clocks follow the same 12 hour / 60 minute symmetry, yet studies suggest that as we get older, we don’t experience time the same way. And there are many theories that explain why it feels like time speeds up as we grow older. Many psychologists believe that as we age, our perception of time begins to accelerate versus time actually speeding up. Studies indicate that biological changes in the human body that happen as it ages, such as reduced dopamine production in the brain, impact our internal clock.
Furthermore, some believe that as we grow up, we have fewer emotional and arousing experiences – the first kiss, the first trip away from home, the first heartbreak. How can we slow down time? Sources: Dressing Up the Brain: Wearing a Suit Makes You Think Differently. Some psychology research in recent years is making an old aphorism look like an incomplete thought: Clothes make the man… Yes? Go on? Clothes, it appears, make the man perceive the world differently.
A new study looks specifically at how formal attire changes people's thought processes. “Putting on formal clothes makes us feel powerful, and that changes the basic way we see the world,” says Abraham Rutchick, an author of the study and a professor of psychology at California State University, Northridge.
Rutchick and his co-authors found that wearing clothing that’s more formal than usual makes people think more broadly and holistically, rather than narrowly and about fine-grained details. In psychological parlance, wearing a suit encourages people to use abstract processing more readily than concrete processing. Research on the effects of clothing on cognition remains in its early stages. The researchers arrived at their finding after a series of experiments.
Teachers Top 100 Books for Children. The following list was compiled from an online survey in 2007. Parents and teachers will find it useful in selecting quality literature for children. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown I Love You Forever by Robert N. How To Master Your Time. The secret to time management is simple: Jedi time tricks. Imagine you were a Jedi master called Bob (your parents, whilst skilled in the ways of the force weren’t the best at choosing names). The love of your life – Princess Lucia – is trapped in a burning building as you hurry to save her. You might think of Lucia as the embodiment of your dreams, your aspirations – she is your most important thing. Unfortunately, before you can reach her an army of stormtroopers open fire. We all know how a hero resolves this dilemma.
And so it is with your life. The secret to mastering your time is to systematically focus on importance and suppress urgency. Look at what you spend your day doing. Say no. Schedule your priorities. One final lesson from the Jedi: they’re heroes. Heroes inspire us for many reasons: they make tough decisions, they keep going and they get done what matters. We think more rationally in a foreign language. One of psychology's major contributions has been to document the myriad ways our thinking is sent haywire by a series of biases.
Investigations into the ways and means to combat these biases have lagged behind, but that's starting to change. Now a team of researchers at the University of Chicago has reported that people are immune to two key biases when they think in their second, less familiar language. The first half of the investigation involved well-established framing effects. Participants were told that 600,000 people were at risk from a deadly disease. They were then presented with the same decision framed differently. The gamble in each condition is effectively the same, but numerous studies have shown that people are systematically influenced by the way the choice is framed. The second half of the investigation focused on loss aversion. Boaz Keysar,, Sayuri L. Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
Training the Brain to Listen: A Practical Strategy for Student Learning and Classroom Management. Image credit: iStockphoto Editor's note: This post is co-authored by Marcus Conyers who, with Donna Wilson, is co-developer of the M.S. and Ed.S. Brain-Based Teaching degree programs at Nova Southeastern University.
They have written several books, including Five Big Ideas for Effective Teaching: Connecting Mind, Brain, and Education Research to Classroom Practice. During the school year, students are expected to listen to and absorb vast amounts of content. Explicit instruction on cognitive strategies that can help students learn how to learn may have a positive impact on both academic performance and classroom management by emphasizing that students are in charge of their own behavior and learning.
Learning to listen well is a prime example of a skill that many assume shouldn't need to be taught. From a developmental perspective, this Common Core standard is interwoven with the acquisition of verbal and social skills that are critical for students' success across many contexts. Learning languages is a workout for brains, both young and old. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Learning a new language changes your brain network both structurally and functionally, according to Penn State researchers. "Learning and practicing something, for instance a second language, strengthens the brain," said Ping Li, professor of psychology, linguistics and information sciences and technology.
"Like physical exercise, the more you use specific areas of your brain, the more it grows and gets stronger. " Li and colleagues studied 39 native English speakers' brains over a six-week period as half of the participants learned Chinese vocabulary. Of the subjects learning the new vocabulary, those who were more successful in attaining the information showed a more connected brain network than both the less successful participants and those who did not learn the new vocabulary. The researchers also found that the participants who were successful learners had a more connected network than the other participants even before learning took place.