background preloader

What’s Going on Inside the Brain Of A Curious Child?

What’s Going on Inside the Brain Of A Curious Child?
By Maanvi Singh, NPR How does a sunset work? We love to look at them, but Jolanda Blackwell wanted her 8th graders to really think about them, to wonder and question. So Blackwell, who teaches science at Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High in Davis, Calif., had her students watch a video of a sunset on YouTube as part of a physics lesson on motion. “I asked them: ‘So what’s moving? Once she got the discussion going, the questions came rapid-fire. Students asking questions and then exploring the answers. Blackwell, like many others teachers, understands that when kids are curious, they’re much more likely to stay engaged. But why? Our Brains On Curiosity “In any given day, we encounter a barrage of new information,” says Charan Ranganath, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, and one of the researchers behind the study. Ranganath was curious to know why we retain some information and forget other things. Curiosity Helps Us Learn Boring Stuff, Too What We Still Don’t Know Related:  Emotional & social developmentThe Brain

16 Guidelines 16 Guidelines “I have been implementing the 16 Guidelines in our classroom over the past three years. During this time, I have noticed that the children’s emotional and social awareness has been greatly enhanced. They have become more aware of their daily interactions with their peers and can often be heard reminding one another of the Guidelines through out the day.” - Linda Manazzone, early school educator, McMaster Children’s Centre preschool program, Ontario, Canada The 16 Guidelines programme provides a simple, robust and flexible framework for developing empathy, compassion and resilience in daily life, suitable for both educational curricula and for personal and professional development. The programme offers a range of practical tools and resources designed to promote reflection on the way we think, speak, act, and find meaning in life, presented through a mixture of exercises, group work and discussion. For more information see www.16guidelines.org.

Bilingual Education: 6 Potential Brain Benefits : NPR Ed Part of our ongoing series exploring how the U.S. can educate the nearly 5 million students who are learning English. Brains, brains, brains. One thing we've learned at NPR Ed is that people are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience findings. But there is one happy nexus where research is meeting practice: bilingual education. Again and again, researchers have found, "bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for a lifetime," in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what's often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs. Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. Attention Empathy

I vaccini nel Cialtronevo Sfogliando le mie collezioni di vecchi fumetti ho trovato degli inserti dedicati alla campagna contro la poliomielite che vi voglio mostrare. La poliomielite è una malattia virale che attacca le cellule nervose e a volte il sistema nervoso centrale che può causare la paralisi o addirittura la morte. Nella maggior parte dei casi una persona in salute sopravvive alla poliomielite senza problemi, ma in circa l’1% dei malati l’infezione ha esiti terribili. Ci sono evidenze, in reperti egizi, che la paralisi da polio fosse già conosciuta nel 1000 AC. Raccontano Rino Rappuoli e Lisa Vozza nel libro “I vaccini dell’era globale” Il male però per migliaia di anni non è stato considerato una minaccia grave quanto il vaiolo, la peste o altre infezioni comuni perché le incursioni del virus si sono limitate a episodi sporadici. Dal 1900 sono documentate varie epidemie di polio in tutto il mondo, spesso ognuna più forte delle precedenti. Il 1916 la polio colpisce violentemente New York: Nel 1947 il Dr.

Using Brain Breaks to Restore Students’ Focus Early in my teaching career, I was disturbed by a note left by the substitute teacher. She wrote that during the three days she was with my students, they were responsive during the first part of class, but that many of them became inattentive, distracted, and even disruptive after about 20 minutes of her instruction. When I asked the students what had happened, they were of one voice: “She didn’t give us our brain breaks.” What Are Brain Breaks? For students to learn at their highest potential, their brains need to send signals efficiently from the sensory receptors (what they hear, see, touch, read, imagine, and experience) to memory storage regions of the brain. Brain breaks are planned learning activity shifts that mobilize different networks of the brain. The Neuroscience of Brain Breaks For new information to become memory, it must pass through an emotional filter called the amygdala and then reach the prefrontal cortex. Brain Breaks Restore Brain Supplies Timing Mood Motivation

Chart: How Inside Out's 5 emotions work together to make more feelings Very, very mild spoilers for Inside Out follow. An important part of the climax of Pixar's wonderful new film Inside Out involves the realization that all of our emotions are important, that feeling sad can be just as crucial as feeling happy, no matter what others might tell you. But the movie also reveals that as we get older, our emotions begin to blend together into newer, more complicated feelings. Early in the film, Riley — the 11-year-old girl whose mind serves as Inside Out's primary setting — is largely defined by very primal feelings. She's either all joy or all sadness. However, once Riley moves from Minnesota to San Francisco, she discovers that her joyful memories of her old home are now tinged with sadness. But as we see in the last scene, more and more of Riley's memories are colored by two emotions at a time. Here's our best guess, in graphic form from Christophe Haubursin. Christophe Haubursin/Vox Vox Video: Keep your emotions in-check at the claw machine

The Science of Gratitude - How it Changes People, Relationships (and Brains!) and How to Make it Work For You Gratitude – we’re all capable of it, but sometimes we need a little reminder, or a little convincing to practice it. There are many reasons to practice gratitude, but we are only recently discovering one of the big ones – its capacity to change and strengthen the brain in remarkably positive ways. Gratitude is powerful. It might not throw itself at our feet and demand our attention in a ‘why oh why won’t you notice me’ kind of way, but it’s powerful. Research has shown that gratitude can improve general well-being, increase resilience, strengthen social relationships, and reduce stress and depression. The more grateful people are, the greater their overall well-being and life satisfaction. Why is gratitude important? Gratitude involves noticing the goodness in the world, but it doesn’t mean being blind to the tough stuff or the mess that can get all of us from time to time. It strengthens our connections with people. It lets people know we aren’t the type to take things for granted.

Don't learn to code. Learn to think. (This blog post was covered on Lifehacker and translated into Spanish and Chinese.) It seems like everyone is trying to learn to code: Code.org has celebrities like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Chris Bosh telling you anyone can code; CoderDojo’s are springing up all over the country; the UK has made it part of their official curriculum for all grade school kids. I think this is slightly misguided. Don’t get me wrong - I do think the world would be better off if everyone had some familiarity with coding - but coding itself should not be the goal. Computers and programming are just tools. They are a means to an end. The real goal should be to teach people a new way to think. If you prefer a video explanation, I highly recommend Simon Peyton Jones’ wonderful TED talk Teaching Creative Computer Science, which was the inspiration for this post: Still here for the written version? To answer that, we’ll take a walk. Welcome to the real world Let’s head outside. Software is eating the world.

TRANSITION TIPS & BRAIN BREAK IDEAS TO INCREASE ENGAGEMENT We all know that lengthy periods with immobile kiddos spells trouble in the classroom - decreased engagement, behavior problems, heads on desks, and countless other undesirable outcomes. Well, with the wet weather coming and the standards kicking into high gear, here are a few movement/transition ideas that just may be the ticket for you and your crew. STANDARDS-BASED PE GAMESWe all have standards to cover . . . why not mix it up with a little movement while you are at it? This one is pretty easy to implement if you think outside of the box just a bit. I am all about using music in the classroom to help further understanding and break up lessons. I’ll spill the beans a little here. This may sound stupid, but I pull these out in a pinch on more than occasion each year. KOO KOO, MR. Okay, so we all have those moments when we need to liven things up or eliminate wiggles without ANY sort of prep. Well, there you have it.

If It Were My Home Put Working Memory to Work in Learning Working memory involves the conscious processing and managing of information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension. It has been described as the brain's conductor. Memory has long been viewed as a key aspect of learning, but as the emphasis in educational standards has shifted away from rote memorization and toward the knowledge and skills needed to process new information, working memory is increasingly taking center stage. There is an explosion of research today with the aim of understanding how this important function works and how to enhance it. Working Memory in the Brain Central executive monitors and coordinates input and decides which information we will focus our attention on. Working memory is involved in a variety of learning and daily living tasks, such as reading, problem solving, and navigation. Thus, working memory is a key cognitive skill for students and their teachers. Workouts for Working Memory Repeat after me.

eShares 101 eShares 101 All eShares employees (new and old) take a full-day course called eShares 101. It is an introduction to our company, our values, and our execution strategy. The class size is kept small (8–10 people) so everyone can participate in the group discussions. I’ve posted my deck here. Slide #2 — Prerequisites The prerequisite for this course is to read The Lean Startup and How to Win Friends & Influence People. The term “MVP” (Minimum Viable Product) is used every day at eShares. You will also apply Dale Carnegie’s rules to your customers, coworkers, vendors, and team on a daily basis. Slide #5 — eShares is run like a Professional Sports Team Most companies find role models in other companies (e.g. Slide #7 — Show up on time everyday at 8:30am There are many similarities between eShares and a professional sports team. Teams meet to solve problems, brainstorm ideas, share work, or just catch up. Slide #15 — We are Software People At eShares, we are all Software People. 3.

School's trade project will help Nepal Last updated 10:31, June 9 2015 Rose Cawley / Fairfax NZ The With One Loaf kids now want to sell their sleepout and put the money towards building houses in earthquake stricken Nepal. From left: Felix Allanson, Deklan Matangaro, Rose Bennett and Lotta McNamara. A tiny Auckland building is going up for auction. And the owners, a group of primary school kids, have their hearts set on a big return. The sale of the sleepout is part of a classroom project at Grey Lynn School. One of the first trades was for a toilet. The kids started with one loaf of bread and their aim was to keep trading for items of higher value until they reached their goal - a house for a deserving family. READ MORE: * Students' ambitious trade project * A step closer to house trade But things haven't quite gone to plan. The youngsters thought they had it made when they came in possession of a sleepout. But no one wanted to trade for their sleepout. Things progressed to a kitchen unit. - Stuff

Related: