Brain Based Teaching: KISS
by Peter J. Foley, Ed.D.
David Sousa – “Lecture continues to be the most prevalent model in secondary and higher education but produces the lowest degree of retention.”
In Thailand I have met teachers who use brain based teaching in their classroom. This is good. What is disappointing is that the approach to using brain based teaching is incomplete and often the research behind the teaching practice is only partially understood or not understood at all. For example, some Thai teachers use the mind mapping techniques with students in order to help the students design their own learning projects. What teachers often fail to do is to coach students to connect the mind mapping exercises to what they already know, what they hope to learn, and where they will find out the information to complete a particular project or exercise. Moreover, there is often a huge gap in the students’ mind-mapping plans and the student’s real, personal interests and the students’ experience. In fact the planned project often turns out to be what the teacher is interested in, not the students. And it also turns out to be based on the teacher’s experience, not the students.
A cardinal rule of brain based teaching is that learning that connects to a learner’s experience and interests will optimize long term memory learning. What teachers must master is how to set up a classroom and lesson plans that will optimize learning. You do this by understanding what conditions and methods of learning an individual’s brain needs to learn best. For most teachers the KISS (keep it simple stupid) rule should be followed.
To keep it simple, it is useful to remember Craine and Craine’s three principles of complex learning:
1. relaxed alertness
2. orchestrated immersion and
3. active processing.
RELAXED ALERTNESS
Effective teaching starts with creating a friendly, nurturing classroom. It is common sense (and research shows) that fear and threats close a mind to complex learning and the mind goes to survival mode. Thus teachers who rely on negative criticism and verbal and corporeal punishments or otherwise instilling fear in his/her students are actually preventing learning. Brain research evidence suggests that stress is a significant factor in creativity, memory, behavior and learning. Teachers who purposely manage stress factors (purposefully decrease stress of failure or embarrassment) in class are likely to experience a positive classroom environment. There are many ways to decrease stress in the classroom, such as integrating stretching exercises, incorporating recess, teaching coping skills, and utilizing physical education.
The teacher can create relaxed alert students when the role of the teacher becomes that of a coach, one who nurtures, encourages, demonstrates with enthusiasm and purposefulness.
ORCHESTRATED IMMERSION
As the term “orchestrated immersion” implies, the teacher becomes the orchestra leader composing lesson plans that incorporate experiences that will lead students to make meaningful connections. To cite an illustration, in Bradenton, Florida I observed a class where the math teacher taught measurements, including the metric system, using cooking as an experiential springboard. The teacher had learned that many in his class were passionate about cooking. Small groups of students worked out measurements for individual recipes. All the students were totally engaged in the preparation of different recipes. Every one passed the core curriculum skills test on weights and measurement with no difficulty.
ACTIVE PROCESSING
A teacher’s lesson should give time and space for student to reflect on what they are learning. It is also important that during the processing time the teacher makes formative assessment to check students’ understanding of the concepts just taught. A useful reflective instrument is the keeping by each student their own journal that can be sued by both student and teacher to tract the student/s progress and further questions.
Another simple list that can be used by teachers to help create good brain based teaching practices is the use of Susan Kovalik’s model ITI (Integrated Thematic Instruction). Kovalik lists nine brain-compatible elements in the learning process:
Absence of Threat( this should include the threat of failure by students)
Meaningful Content
Choices
Movement to Enhance Learning
Enriched Environment
Adequate Time
Collaboration
Immediate Feedback
Mastery (application level)
Our last simple guideline to brain based teaching and learning is from Marlee Sprenger: Sensory to Long-Term Memory in Seven Steps.
1. Reach: Grab students’ attention by introducing the topic in a way that is meaningful to them.
2. Reflect: Allow students to make connections between new information and prior learning through such activities as writing or responding to a question.
3. Recode: Have students put ideas they have encountered in their own words.
4. Reinforce: Provide positive reinforcement to students when recoding is accurate, or give informational feedback to avoid lingering misconceptions.
5. Rehearse: Engage students in related activities that demand higher levels of thinking and incorporate multiple memory systems.
6. Review: Offer brain-compatible review activities such as practice tests, games, drawing, writing, mind maps, and acting.
7. Retrieve: Ask students to retrieve newly-formed memories and apply them in different ways.
Within these steps there are many opportunities to incorporate brain based learning. For example in the reflection step it is useful to turn to your neighbor and discuss a topic. Stopping at key interval in a lesson for students to reflect on a topic with one another is a way to achieve long term memory learning. Humans are social and we learn and reinforce learning through interaction with others. The brain based teaching conscious teacher will also be aware that the short attention spans of the average student demand appealing to different senses for learning and different learning exercises to hold students attention. Make these simple principles and active part of your classroom planning and actuation.
This short review of some of some of the best guidelines to brain based teaching and learning is intended to encourage the reader to delve further into using brain based teaching methods and to KISS ( Keep it Simple Stupid).
1. R. Caine and G. Caine: Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain ( 1991)
2. Susan Kovalik: The Model Integrated Thematic Instruction (1993)
3. Marlee Sprenger: Becoming a “Wiz” at Brain-Based Teaching (2006)