How Brain’s Learn

1. How Brain’s Learn

2. Teaching vs. Learning

3. Brain Anatomy

4. Brain Hemisphericity Allyn & Bacon, 1998

5. Flow of a Neuron Impulse

6. Information Processing Model Rehearsal Sight RECEPTORS Sound Elaboration & Organization Sensory Memory Long-Term Memory Working Memory Initial Processing Smell Taste Retrieval Touch Not transferred to the next stage and therefore forgotten

7. Age Can Remember 15 7 13 6 11 5 9 4 7 2 Working Memory Limits What’s the meaning of Miller’s 7 +/- 2?

8. Attention • Stimuli bombardment • Mental filtering in sensory register and short term memory • Attention is paid to things that are: • Novel • Intense • Move

9. Attention Limitations What is the cocktail party effect? What might you say to a teacher who simultaneously talks and presents overheads to their class? What would you say to a child who wants to study with music or a TV playing?

10. Emotion and Attention Emotion drives attention, and attention drives learning. Robert Sylwester (1995) What’s the significance of this sentence? Emotions create the relationship between the importance of an event and how well we remember that event. One shot learning

11. Emotion and Attention Accident Scene Studies

12. Meaning and Attention Does this stimulus match a previous one for you? The notes were sour because the seams split.

13. Meaning and Association What happened in your brain when you saw this figure?

14. Brain’s Make Associations • What color is this screen?

15. Explore Your Neural Network

16. Active Organizer of Information Humans create organization – Bousfield (1953) What was the study? Subjects told to memorize lists of 60 nouns in a random order (names, animals, professions, and vegetables) When people wrote out their recollection of the list, it came out organized. The stimulus was the same, but people’s organization differed.

17. Ebbinghaus’ Curve of Forgetting What’s the significance for teachers? Patricia Wolfe. Brain Matters. 2001.

18. Ausubel The best predictor of what and how much you’ll learn is what you already know about a topic. rote learning. No association = First associations are the strongest. Changing established associations can be difficult.

19. Ausubel • According to Ausubel, for instruction you must: • Activate prior learning • Make similarities and differences clear between new and existing information • Analogies: How is this the same? How is this different?

20. Let’s Review – So what? • What might you say to a teacher who says they’re going to teach art to stimulate their students’ right hemispheres?

21. Let’s Review – So what? • What might you say to a teacher who is having trouble gaining their students’ attention?

22. Let’s Review – So what? • In what ways could teachers raise the level of emotion associated with a given assignment? • How can teachers keep levels of emotion at a productive level?

23. Multiple Int. vs. Schema Theory • No clear evidence to date of brain structures or functions that support multiple intelligences. • New tools reveal how memories are stored.

24. PET Scans • PET scan showing mental activity

25. Storing Info. Long Term Schema: An organized knowledge structure reflecting an individual’s knowledge, experience and expectations about some aspect of the world. Simpler definition = a complex neural network of connected information.

26. Whale Schema Allyn & Bacon, 1998

27. Recalling Information • Recall is the simultaneous activation of all the neurons associated with a memory within a schema. • A given neuron may be part of multiple memories. • Efficiency • Letters / words.

28. Schema for Bison Allyn & Bacon, 1998

29. Schemas Affect Recall • Story about a house from two perspectives: • Real estate agent • Burglar

30. Schemas Affect Recall Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts (1932). • Recall errors revealed subjects interpreted the story through the lens of their own experience: • Canoe and paddle became boat and oar • Plot become more conventional

31. Schema: Memory Distortions Allyn & Bacon, 1998

32. Schema: Advantages / Disadvantages

33. Supporting Robust Schema • Form connections to prior learning • Anticipatory Set • Focuses attention on relevant existing schema • Motivation • Starting a lesson with what students know and having students build understanding • Fossils

34. Supporting Robust Schema • Strengthen the connections through repeated activation • Daily Oral Language • Spelling Quiz

35. Form Deep Connections Bloom’s Taxonomy

36. Form Multiple Connections • Involve multiple senses. • Each path / connection makes the schema more robust. • Learning about the ocean: • Look (this is the usual focus) • Taste • Sound • Smell • Touch

37. Form Multiple Connections Dual Coding - Paivio

38. Form Multiple Connections

39. Form Multiple Connections

40. Strengthen the Connections • Create Associations – hook the unfamiliar to the familiar: • Analogies • Similes • Identify Patterns

41. Strengthen the Connections • Mnemonic Devices • Treble clef: Every Good Boy Does Fine • Acronyms: SCUBA • Have students restate the learning in their own words

42. Strengthen the Connections • Articulate relationships between concepts • Examples / nonexamples • Charts • Matrices • Models • Outlines / flowcharts • Graphs

43. Strengthen the Connections • Repetition. • Restate / model the learning during lesson • Include guided and independent practice within lessons • Provide distributed practice over time

44. Strengthen the Connections • Active student elaboration.

45. Let’s Review – So what? • How might you respond to the criticism that the use of flashcards to learn the times tables is “drill and kill”?

46. Let’s Review – So what? • Based on what you’ve learned so far, why might students learn more about turtles by having a real turtle in the classroom as opposed to reading about turtles?

47. Let’s Review – So what? • Imagine you’re a kindergarten teacher. • Based on what you’ve learned today, why is describing a rectangle as just like a square that’s been squeezed likely to support student learning?

48. Piaget: Stages of Development • Children aren’t miniature adults. • Cognitive development occurs in stages.

49. Piaget: Stages of Development Allyn & Bacon, 1998

50. Piaget: Stages of Development • Developmentally appropriate instruction • Make instruction real / concrete • Realia • Manipulatives • Scaffolds • Videos – images