Grey Matters: Teaching the way the brain learns

Struggling readers?

7/31/2020

Here's a question I recently received: "How does Grey Matters, knowing how the brain learns, and the Brain Targeted Teaching Model help me with struggling readers?"

While this documentary is not a "how to" guide or curriculum, here’s how it can help teachers or reading instructors, working with struggling readers:

Target 1 - Understanding the emotional climate. You are working with children who have failed more than they have succeeded. Most likely, your students are coming into the learning space (classroom or online) expecting to fail, as they have in the past. Your first job is to really create a safe emotional learning space. Understanding this is key to gaining trust and engagement from your learners. This is where you show them
Target 3 - Learning design. The battle of whole word vs phonics continues to engender a great deal of debate. Neuroscience research indicates the brain looks for patterns and when it comes to reading, the key is to ensure readers have a good grasp of their letters, how that relates to words, sentences, etc. Vicky Krug, featured in the film, says, “Reading is not just a one-time process. I spend a lot of time talking about the actual reading process in the brain , the structure of writing and the structure of how words and phrases in paragraphs fit together to help students create patterns in their minds of language. How to follow a main idea with details; the role of a topic sentence. And I have them use vocabulary cartoons to really create visuals of what they’re reading.”

It’s going to be hard for your struggling reader to conceive of anything beyond their present struggle with reading. This is where understanding the concept of neuroplasticity comes into play and letting your struggling reader know that it is possible to rewire your brain. Your brain can change. and the fact that we can change our brain, based on practice and more importantly, multi sensorial approaches to teaching, makes a huge difference.

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Teaching during Covid-19

5/26/2020

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E-learning and E-teaching during Coronavirus is proving to be challenging for everyone. I've asked students to view this as pandemic schooling, rather than homeschooling. And I'm reminding myself that this is new for everyone. There really isn't anything as far as precedent and best practices.

Yes, distance learning has existed for quite some time, but there is a difference between something that is planned and structured, versus something that is cobbled together on the fly. And it's hard to meet students' needs in an equitable fashion, when there are issues of internet and device access.

Vicky Krug, of Westmoreland County Community College, continues to use the Brain Targeted Teaching model, during this period of pandemic schooling. "My first priority is really checking in on their emotional well-being, before tackling academic objectives, because they're not going to pay attention to me, if they're scared about their health or resources, etc," she says. "I need to make sure they're ok before I can get their attention."

This goes back to Brain Target 1 and ensuring that the emotional climate is conducive to learning.

From here, it can get a little tricky. It's hard to make the case for schedule and consistency when everything in the world seems chaotic and unpredictable. With this in mind, Krug lets students know that she will adapt her schedule to work with them as best she can. This might mean doing a walking Zoom call so that her students can get outside for some fresh air and talk about psychology fundamentals.

So how is she handling the question of engagement and just making sure students show up? After all, you don't have the boundaries of four walls and a physical learning space to
adhere to?

Krug reminds me that there are only so many things you can control, "If I notice a student is absent for more than one or two classes, I'll call them to see what I'm missing. In one case, a student was struggling with navigating some economic hardship issues, so we walked though resources. Another was spending more time gaming, so that made me think about how I could use gaming in my teaching to make things more engaging."

She continues, "Teaching during coronavirus has pushed me, and I think teachers in general, to really clarify the learning objectives and rubrics for assessment. Not that I didn't before, but you can clarify so much more during a face to face interaction. I'm also very aware of relevancy, more than ever in fact, because things need to adhere to a higher sense of purpose, rather than just being a spot on the curriculum to cover."

For now, Krug is pushing though the technology learning curve and trying to ensure no one falls through the cracks right now. And that means shifting and adapting on the go because, "We have to meet our students where they are."

Hats off to Vicky and teachers everywhere.

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Why Learning Styles are Irrelevant

9/8/2017

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If you believe the learning styles theory, you’re showing up to class with 3 different versions of your lesson plan - one for the kinesthetic learner, another for the visual, a third for the auditory, right?

No, you’re not doing that?

But…but what the different learning styles of your students??

Clearly, no one is showing up to class with three lesson plans. (Unless you are, in which case, please comment below…I’d love to talk about what you’ve found).

In 2008 four psychologists collaborated and cohesively studied the existing literature on learning styles; they concluded that there was no strong evidence to support the learning styles theory but they didn’t completely rule it out. You can read the paper by Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, & Bjork, here: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf

Yet we continue to talk about learning styles in education.

Veteran Baltimore City Public Schools educator, Dr. Mariale Hardiman, now Professor of Education at Johns Hopkins University, recommends teachers think big picture learning goals and let those learning goals drive the activities and assessments, “When teachers focus solely on the individual points students often miss the larger concepts or the “big picture” essential for deep understanding and memory.”

I look at it as giving the main idea rather than just the bulleted points, as in, “Here’s what you’re going to learning in this section/unit building on previous knowledge of x,y, and z.” I also like to outline the takeaways, as in, here’s what you’re really learning to do. If you’re more of a sports analogy person, think big play, instead of move by move.

But, what about my kinesthetic and auditory and visual learners, teachers will say at this point.

Vicky Krug, a college professor at Westmoreland County Community College, featured in Grey Matters, says, “I take a multi sensorial approach to what I teach and I design the learning experience using multiple senses. I know that getting students up and about in class helps their engagement and focus so I incorporate that. Some material naturally lends itself to movement and with other stuff, I find a way to work it in. I add visuals, I have students repeat things out loud”

Want to try a multi sensorial approach in your classroom? Try backwards planning. What are the key things your students need to master at the end of the unit? Then, think about the best ways to make that happen from both an activities and assessment perspective.

Invest in planning
When Jeremy Mettler planned a unit on the importance of the Suez Canal he started with an in class unit to give him an idea of the collective knowledge base of his students, incorporated flash cards with vocabulary cartoons to help students quickly grasp the basics, and then designed an experience that brought home the differences of travel pre-canal and post-canal. “The biggest thing fear for teachers is the lack of content time but when I invest in planning and using some kind of visual organizer to highlight the key concepts of the unit, it strengthens my teaching practice in class. I teach, instead of just covering content”.

Mix it up
Krug teaches college level developmental reading and writing; she often chooses different instruction materials to help her students grasp concepts simply because they’re more interesting. It’s not uncommon to hear Dr. Seuss or debates on the 14th Amendment in her classes. “I’m a big believer in fun and I give students multiple ways to experience the material so that they have multiple ways to retrieve the material”.

Incorporate Real Life
Justin Holbrook, a 4th grade STEM teacher at Roland Park Elementary, tries to show the real life applications of things, “When students see what I’m teaching them is applicable in the real world, they pay more attention. Place value translated nicely into pay cheques; calculating area was a great way to weigh in on some of the proposed changes to various spaces to our school”.

You can see Mettler, Krug, and Holbrook in the education documentary Grey Matters: Teaching The Way The Brain Learns.

Interested in purchasing for Professional Development? Click here and join teachers and school districts across the US who are using Grey Matters to engage their students and strengthen their teaching practice.

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Struggling readers?

Teaching during Covid-19

Why Learning Styles are Irrelevant

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