Just finished tweaking (I hope!) a presentation on brain research in the classroom that I’m doing tomorrow for the UnConference. Looking forward to some great conversation and thinking out loud with conference participants.
We don’t have a ton of time so will focus on just a couple of things that people like John Medina and James Zull talk about – namely the importance of prior knowledge and the impact of emotion/stress
I’m convinced that the more we know about how our kids’ brains work, the better teachers we become and the more effective our instruction becomes. The most important thing, I think, is when we think and talk about brain research, the focus shifts to our students and away from us.
As part of the presentation, I will have participants work through a few strategies that are brain compatible: the first is a visual discrepant event inquiry and the second is an example of inserting music as a part of a series of Civil War images.
The visual DEI asks kids to view a photograph and try and answer three questions about that photograph. The questions are: where is the event taking place, when does the event take place and what is happening in the photograph. The catch is that you reveal only a small portion of the photograph at a time. By forcing kids to look for specific details and by asking each other questions, you can activate a whole classroom’s worth of prior knowledge very effectively. (You can see a little of what it looks like by viewing the SlideShare presentation below.)
The second is a basic presentation software that incorporates emotional pieces of music together with appropriate images. The idea is to connect content with emotion thus making stronger brain connections.
Take a look, provide some feedback and let me know what you’re thinking.
