Grey Matters: Teaching the way the brain learns

Arts integration offers big gains

8/15/2019

Arts integration continues to receive big accolades when it comes to garnering student engagement in the classroom. Yet, it sounds intimidating to most teachers, especially when you don't consider yourself "artistic" or "creative".

At the end of the day, integrating arts into a lesson can be as simple or as complicated as you'd like. Simple might be using a graphic organizer or a famous painting to teach history, or something more involved as teaching a concept and having students demonstrate their understanding using poetry, or a skit.

This South Carolina school has taken it a step further (click the link to read the full story). “I chose to have a creative writer come to my class to help introduce the writing concept of poetry,” she says. “I was pretty sure this was not going to be a well-received project with my students.”

Arts integration isn't just "another thing for teachers to do". Research shows huge gains in both retention and recall of material, which bodes well for mastery of a topic. Check out this recent interview with Dr. Mariale Hardiman of Johns Hopkins School of Education.

Have you tried integrating arts into your lesson planning?

Join the conversation and comment below.

If you'd like to learn more about the film, email info [at] changethelensproductions [.] com or just hit the contact button below.

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From short-term memory to long term memory

1/7/2019

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The darkened portion, housed within the medial temporal lobe of the brain is the hippocampus. And it's tasked with moving information from short term memory to long term memory.

Stress has been found to shrink the hippocampus, so if you're teaching students who are living with chronic stress or trauma, you may need to explore additional options.

To help your students successfully move information from short term memory, i.e.. what you taught today, into long term memory, i.e. retrieving it during another class, on a related subject, or for a test in a few weeks from now, try these:

1. Art
Studies have shown, when art is incorporated into content, it increases retention, and retrieval. Think of it this way - you're offering your students a different way to remember the information. Maybe it's a flow chart to visualize process, or a funny comic strip (complete with stick figures) to map out complex sequences.

Still not sure where to start?

This list of graphic organizers might help. Graphic organizers help to organize content heavy instruction, into manageable, bite-sized pieces.

2. Consistent Note Taking

Taking notes is key. But what does it mean to have good notes? Start with giving your students a format for note taking, outlining the central idea at the beginning of the lesson and the goals for the section. This helps to narrow their focus and outline the expectations. Recommend a two column method - one column for making notes, and the second for the questions generated by the notes. Build in a few minutes where students can share their questions; this will help you to understand both their knowledge gaps and their perspective.

This format is from Cornell University and while it's recommended for high school and up, I think it's easily adapted to early elementary and middle school year.

3. Relevancy and Recall

The more you can connect information to real-world examples, or things that are relevant to your students, the greater the likelihood it will be remembered. Things make more sense when we have some degree of personal connection, we can discern a similarity, or connect it something we already know. That's why, when we are explaining something, we usually say, "It's kind of like...", in an attempt to connect the new, to the known.

In this clip, from the trailer of Grey Matters, at second 0:33, Zoe talks about wanting things to be more connected, to see the bigger picture.

4. Active Retrieval

Encourage students to quiz themselves. Whether it's covering up the information and trying to remember everything on a list or using flashcards where the definition is on one side and the vocabulary word on the other, or whatever the content lends itself. Additionally, work in quizzes into your instruction, as well as, review time.

Read more about active retrieval practices here.

When it comes to long term memory incorporate the visual arts into your lesson; offer students a choice of how they would like to demonstrate their knowledge in a visual format - maybe it's a graphic organizer of some kinds, a poem, or a drawing. Consistent note taking is key; ensure students know the objectives of the unit study. Following on this, illustrate the connection of what they are learning to what they already know. And finally, encourage active retrieval practices or quizzes.

Share your in-class practices in the comments.

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Connecting the Knowledge

7/6/2017

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One of the keys to helping information resonate or stick with students is to show how it applies in both theoretical and real life situations, as well as showing how it applies across disparate subject areas.

Give someone more ways to think about something, chances are, they’ll remember it.

And giving them ways to connect information, helps them see the world they live in for all of it’s nuances and “grey” areas.

Soft skills of inference and prediction are bolstered with the ability to make connections. If this, then maybe that, and that, because of x, y, and a, and b.

But how do you connect the knowledge taught in an Ancient History class with Social/Civic studies? Or Science with ELA Writing? Or ELA Reading ?

Curriculums are usually organized in silos, by subject, and offer only learning objectives for that specific subject area. Consider organizing teaching teams, by grade, and give teachers collaborative planning time.

If teachers, across a grade level, have a rudimentary understanding of what their students will be learning in other subjects, they can collaborate to find the tie-ins. This gives students multiple ways to understand concepts, appreciate relationships between subject areas, and helps teachers strengthen their teaching practice.

Studying New World Explorers? Take a moment to throw some place value math concepts in by having students figure out how long ago those events took place. And while you might already do this in class, identity it as place value to reinforce the concept. Looking at Ancient History, perhaps the early River Civilizations? Tie in Geography by identifying map features or trade routes, using geography vocabulary.

Try these tips to create an effective teaching team in your school:
1. Identify a vision or a goal for your team. If you don’t set the goal, how will you know when you’ve met it? For example, by the end of this school year, students will be able to link knowledge across different subject areas.

2. Create a graphic organizer for your class showing the concepts you’re going to cover for your class and share this with your team.

3. Create a vocabulary list on either a biweekly or monthly basis and give one or two examples of relevance to other classes. Do the same thing for key concepts - think outside your subject and your students will too.

4. Communicate with your students about the team. It will help to prime them for thinking across the subjects. Students are just as attached to keeping math in Math class or english in English class.

5. Check in with your team. Tangents from the curriculum happen. A student’s pace will often differ from the suggested instruction pace of the curriculum. Let your team know where you are in the learning process.

Additional resources

For more on cross-curricular teaching check out:

http://www.teachhub.com/approaches-successful-cross-curriculum-integration
http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2017/02/28/four-steps-to-create-a-more-cohesive.html
http://inservice.ascd.org/tearing-down-the-silos-in-k-12-curricula/

Here are what some schools have tried:

http://abc7chicago.com/education/connecting-geometry-class-to-real-world-use/77870/

http://www.salisburyschool.org/page.cfm?p=705

And here’s a teacher’s perspective:

http://lessonplanspage.com/scientific-poetry-cross-curricular-lesson-plans/

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Studying for Tests

5/16/2017

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There are 27 more days left to the 20161/17 school year in New York State (not that anyone’s counting) which means end of year assessments. For most students, that means tests. That chance for teachers to have their own Sally Field moment, “They get it, they really get it.”

As a teacher, you can help your students make their studying more effective by understanding how the brain learns.

If the information stored in the brain is never used, it’s pretty much as if the brain never learned or acquired the information in the first place. If you taught the key battles of the Civil War back in January, and then never referenced that information following the initial conversations, it’s as if you didn’t teach it.

Why?

Because the information was never called upon again - there was no point at which the brain had to retrieve and manipulate that information. Research studies, like this on from Purdue University, on active retrieval say that, “Retrieval is the key process for understanding learning and for promoting learning.”

What does this mean for your teaching practice?

Think of retrieval like giving someone directions to a location. You’ll start by giving the address and then, potentially, landmarks to watch out for. The landmarks act as signals or cues to let them know, they’re getting close. The more cues you give them, the easier it is to find their destination.

Similarly, when you’re teaching something, put it in context. Offer cues to help your learner put it in place. Mr. Mettler, featured in the film, used flash cards and cartoons to help his students remember key facts about historical events.

Bri Parker, who started her year by saying, “School is not for me” found this technique really helped her understand the information, “I’d read the stuff and picture the really goofy cartoon I’d worked on in class to help explain what was going on and it would all come back to me.”

The arts (visual, performance) are an easy way to give your students more context to what they’re learning. Arts add an element of fun, it usually engages the student because it’s something different, and makes the information easier to retrieve.

See how Mettler, and the other teachers featured in the film, use arts integration and active retrieval to engage their students. Click here to order your copy of Grey Matters for your teachers or your district.

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Arts integration offers big gains

From short-term memory to long term memory

Connecting the Knowledge

Studying for Tests

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