Grey Matters: Teaching the way the brain learns

Calming spaces in the classroom

8/17/2017

Ideally, classrooms are busy, active, and stimulating places. There might be out loud reading, collaboration and brainstorming, a teacher guiding conversation and dialogue, and a number of other activities that keep the volume level high.

And on any given day, there might be a student who needs to take a moment to disconnect and regroup. The student who needs a moment is usually easy to spot - sometimes disruptive to their group or completely disengaged from the surrounding activity; body language is also a good indicator.

We’ve all had those moments and we’ve all had those students in our classrooms.

Consider having a space, in class, for students, (or teachers) to take a moment.

And no, this isn’t a new take on standing in the corner; it’s a space where a student can step back, by choice, without fear of judgement or punishment, and freely observe/acknowledge how they are feeling, use a calming down tool from the “I need a moment space” and decide after two minutes, if they need further discussion with a teacher or they can handle it on their own.

You can ask for students’ input on what they would like to have in the space or you can start it on your own.

Here are some suggestions for your “I need a moment” space:
- Make the space inviting and warm, a little piece of “home” in class. A small rug, pillows, maybe a meditation or a bean bag chair.
- Provide a journal for students to share how they are feeling or use this feeling chart (or something similar). Consider modifying to add a column where the student can check off if they’d like to talk with their teacher or another professional.
- Colouring books (and pencils) are a great, physical way to help a child temporarily disconnect and take control of their emotions.
- Stock your space with healthy snacks. Consider nut-free energy bars, trail mix, crackers, bottles of water. Jeremy Mettler, one of the teachers featured in the film, always has snacks on hand because, “If a kid is hungry, they’re not paying attention to my class.”
- Remind your students most emotions pass in 90 seconds.
- Most of all, model the behavior so students know that it’s really ok to utilize the space when needed.

Photo credit: http://at-riskyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/23148-90seconds.png

The dreaded school supply list

7/25/2017

This year, the National Retail Federation estimates a total spend of $4.9 billion dollars (USD) on school supplies such as notebooks, folders, pencils, backpacks and lunch boxes, with an average of $114 per K-12 child.

$114 may not seem that bad. After all, that’s only $11 per month of school.

But, inevitably, there’s the ask from teachers for school supplies to be donated - the extra pencils, crayons, and the inevitable truck load of glue sticks (no, they’re not eating it).

Numerous conversations with parents reveal a resentment, tinged with shades of guilt, for the resentment. The conversation always goes back to school taxes, as in, “I pay my school taxes. I don’t understand why I need to donate school supplies. I’ve expenses just like everyone else and I’m not asking for anyone to help me pay them.”

Then I read the shocking news story about Teresa Danks, a Columbus, OH teacher, who decided to panhandle for the money she needed to purchase school supplies for her classroom.

Here’s the thing - you’re sending your child to school with the requisite supplies. Maybe someone else couldn’t. Maybe their child is one of the 51% of US public school students who live in poverty.

Buying extra supplies is one way to alleviate stress in the classroom, for teachers, and for students in need. If a student is stressed, they’re not learning. They’re thinking about whatever it is, that’s stressing them out. As in, “Crap. I don’t have any more paper. Gotta ask Mom to get me some. How much does paper cost anyway? She’ll probably say I was wasting it and she doesn’t have any money to buy it anyway. I wonder who I can borrow some from. Who haven’t I asked yet?”

Let’s keep our learners focused on learning. And let’s keep our teachers teaching.
So the next time you see that list come home with the extra supplies request, or you take a few tags from the giving tree at preschool/early elementary, relish the chance to be a good neighbor…think of it as your personal Santa Claus moment. You'll feel good and lower your stress.

And if your state participates in the tax free weekend for school supply shopping, take advantage. Here’s a list of the participating states and times: http://hip2save.com/2017/06/26/2017-tax-free-shopping-dates-save-on-back-to-school-shopping-select-states-only/

For more on how schools are funded, check out this piece from NPR; it is a complex and multifaceted story, subject to frequent changes.

Connecting the Knowledge

7/6/2017

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/

The F word

6/14/2017

And the R word…alongside the Y word.

Sir Ken Robinson is a brilliant communicator and educator. It’s almost impossible to not love his TED talks and this particular quote, ““Creativity is now as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”

But what is creativity?

Beyond thinking differently?

Ulrich Kraft, a researcher and writer, frames it this way in his 2005 paper Unleashing Creativity (also featured in F.Bloom (Ed)., Best of the brain from Scientific American: Mind, matter, and tomorrow’s brain), “Fresh solutions result from dissassembling and reassembling the building blocks in an infinite number of ways. That means the problem solver must thoroughly understand the blocks.”

Dr. Mariale Hardiman, author of “The Brain Targeted Teaching Model for 21st Century Schools”, reframes for the classroom like this, “In order to think creatively about something you have to have mastered some knowledge about it.”

It’s the old adage of knowing the rules before you can break the rules.

Which is going to involve the F word.

Failure.

When something doesn’t go quite as planned.

In the film, Jeremy Mettler talks about the push to encourage creativity in his classroom, “If you’re trying something new you’re probably going to fail because you’re just not going to get it on the first try. If you do, then it was too easy or it was a problem that was solved before.”

So the question isn’t so much teaching our kids to be creative, as it is teaching our kids to start over, in the face of failing.

Which brings up the R word.

Resilience.

Resilience is swiftly falling into the overused category in education. It’s up there with grit. But it demands examination. Why does one student, when faced with failure, tackle it with curiosity and inquisitiveness as in, “Hmm…I wonder why that happened,” versus another, who wilts, taking the failure as a personal defeat, personalizing and owning it, as in, “I am a failure.”

Jessica Lahey has written an entire book on failure so I won’t get into it too much, other than to recommend The Gift of Failure and this article she wrote for The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/08/when-success-leads-to-failure/400925/

The gist of it is that parents need to give their children a chance to work through obstacles. Mettler does the same thing in his classroom, “When kids ask me for help, chances are very good I’m not going to get there right away. It’s a class of 25 students. But I also want them to try it on their own first. It gives them a chance to test their abilities and a lot of times, they figure it out. Too often, students assume something is hard, and they haven’t even read the question.”

Angela Watson, from Cornerstone for Teachers, wrote a great post for when students say, “I don’t know.”

So what’s the Y word?

It’s three letters.

And it can make a world of difference to learners.

YET.

As in "You don’t know yet. But you'll figure it out."

So what will you do differently on your next try?

How Questions Reflect Growth

6/8/2017

I’ve a love hate relationship with questions in class. As a student I was convinced I had the dumbest questions and there was no way I was going to ask them, because, in my head, I just knew everyone was going to fall out of their chairs laughing at me. A few decades later, as a parent and educator, I still have a love hate relationship with questions, only this time, it’s because I’m afraid of not knowing the answer, and also thinking, “What? You mean I don’t know everything?”

Imagine my astonishment when I was filming Jeremy Mettler in class, and he’d responded to a student’s question, with a very calm, “That’s a good question, I hadn’t thought of that,” during a discussion on the government shutdown from a few years ago. Or one of the students in Mr. Holbrook’s class who said “I don’t know” because he knew it was ok to own not knowing.

If educators are going to build creative thinkers then they have to be prepared for questions and they also have to be prepared to not know the answers to the questions.

That’s a lot to wrap your head around, especially when you’re used to being in charge and knowing the answers.

There’s also a very good chance you’re going to tangent from the original learning objective outlined in your lesson plan.

Which is awesome and terrifying at the same time.

Here are some ways to encourage questions in your classroom, and stay on track:

When introducing a new unit give students a few days notice and ask them to come to class with 3 things they know and 3 things they want to know. Build that into your lesson planning.
Give students a question and vocabulary log for them to note questions and unfamiliar words that arose for them during class. You can either give students time at the end of class to share and poll to see how many students have similar questions. Or, collect them during an activity, to review and discuss with the class, noting how many students had similar questions. It’s a great way for students to see shared inquiry.
Encourage students to connect what they’re learning with what they already know. Build in 5-10 mins at the end of the class for students reflect on how what they learned is similar to something else. Graphic organizers are great to help them link the knowledge.
Once you feel your students have mastered the concept, brainstorm new things they can do with that knowledge. Their question log may prove to be useful during this exercise. For example, after watching this TED Talk during a climate change unit in a Grade 3 class, students brainstormed ways to turn their unused green spaces into mini forests. Fun and empowering.

Students who ask questions are students who are engaged and growing.

Who’re taking risks.

Who may fail.

And ultimately learn.

Assessment...it's not just for students

5/31/2017

How was your year? Do you feel like you reached your students? Do they get it?

What about you? Did you branch out a little this year? Take a different approach to a subject? Take any risks?

These are questions teachers might be asking, as the 2016/17 school year winds down.

In order to help you answer those questions, it may be time to ask your students to help you create your teacher evaluation portfolio. It’s a quick and short activity, and a great way to help you grow in your teaching practice.

Take a quick poll of your students to find out what their favourite learning unit(s) were. What did they like about it? How would they change it? If they were in charge of planning the unit, what would they include?

Jeremy Mettler, featured in the film, reflects on what worked when he took his senior geography class outside to talk about geographic features, “The first time I did this, it didn’t work because we took notebooks and pens, etc and with the wind, kids were just having too much fun and all they remembered was being outside.” Mettler, thinking through the goals for the lesson and the general nature of his students, tried again, but this time he asked the students to use their phones for note-taking, “Some lesson plans work and some don’t. You have to be ok with failing and remaining flexible.”

Here’s a longer read on creating your teaching portfolio: http://www.washington.edu/teaching/teaching-resources/assessing-and-improving-teaching/self-reflection-on-teaching/

5 Ways To Teach How The Brain Learns

5/20/2017

A few weeks ago I was invited to be a guest on the 10 minute Teacher Podcast, hosted by Vicki Davis of Cool Cat Teacher.

I met Vicki way back at the beginning of pre-production, reading about her work on The Flat Classroom Project, inspired by Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat.

We chatted about 5 things teachers need to know about how the brain learns, from patterning to the need for repetition. Check out the full show below.

Studying for Tests

5/16/2017

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.

Breaking words or building words

5/8/2017

Words can break a student or build a student. What words are are you using in your classroom? Are they building words like “You’re getting better at this” or “I like your persistence” or are they breaking words like “Seriously” or “I can’t believe you don’t remember this”.

We’ve all had those moments where we mentally wonder if our students are ever going to get it. What feels like the millionth time we’ve explained a concept or helped them to sound a word out for the correct spelling; maybe it’s remembering their multiplication tables. And, without meaning to, you might say something like, “Are you kidding me?”

Now maybe you caught yourself and rephrased, in an attempt to not show just how frustrated you are.

Or maybe you didn’t even notice.

But your student did.

That singular moment for the teacher, one of a million in their average day, is now embedded in that student’s mind.

And it’ll stay there.

Nagging at them.

Feeding their insecurity.

And making them doubt their ability.

Well past their school days, they’ll most likely, recall that one moment with that one teacher, who said “Are you kidding me?”

Words are like spells. What spell are you casting in your classroom?

Why Social Emotional Learning Matters

4/26/2017

Setting the emotional tone of your classroom is the most important thing a teacher does.” (Dr.Mariale Hardiman, founder of the Brain Targeted Teaching Model)

Grey Matters was recently included in a teacher training on social emotional learning, in particular, how to work with stressed children.

Stress is a funny beast. It’s kind of like chocolate - small amounts are fine, but it’s the larger quantities that can do you in. Here’s what we know about stress - large and consistent exposure to stress shrinks the hippocampus, the region of your brain involved in memory, and neurons in the pre-frontal cortex, the area of your brain responsible for problem-solving. Read the research here.

So what does this mean for your classroom?

It’s simple - stressed brains aren’t learning.

If a kid shows up to your classroom, having started their day with stress or encountered stress along the way, they are going to be sitting in that stress. A simple “shake it off” or “slip into a learning mindset” or “let’s leave our baggage at the door” isn’t going to shift their brain from the “protective fight or flight mode” into the “thinking thoughtful mode”.
Social-Emotional Learning offers teachers a basic understanding of emotions and the brain and equips teachers with tools and strategies to help students move out of the stress and their emotions, and into the learning day.
In the film Grey Matters, we see the Peace Path used by Justin Holbrook in his Grade 4 classroom, offers students and teachers, a way acknowledge their emotions, communicate calmly and make a resolution for future behaviours. Holbrook designated a space in the rear of his classroom for his Peace Path which offered students a way to vocalize what was troubling them. Maybe someone had called them a mean name, or grabbed something from them. “My kids know that they can go to the Peace Path at anytime, even if I’m teaching. I’ve had kids ask me to go the Peace Path and I’ve asked kids to go to the Peace Path,” Holbrook explains.

One of the biggest things teachers talk about is how to handle external situations that result in stressed students. From home life to peer relationships - there are a lot of things that teachers can’t control. Yet, those outside the classroom situations, often spill over to the classroom.

Do you deal with it? Or ignore it, in hopes it’ll sort it self out?

Turns out neither of those.

A 2007 research study suggests acknowledging the emotion and redirecting the student (barring a life-threatening issue) may be the most effective approach. In action, that could look like, “Did you want to chat after class or do you want to have lunch with me?”, effectively creating some distance between the student and the emotion.

But what if you can’t tell when a student is upset?

Here’s what one teacher did and this piece is excerpted from “The Brain Targeted Teaching Model for the 21st Century School” by Dr. Hardiman, “She designed a simple emotional temperature form with a row of emotions and corresponding adjectives (e.g. good, bad). Students circled how they felt that day and wrote a word or sentence or drew a picture to express his or her emotion. They would take the form, complete it, and return it to a basket, before beginning their work Two things came out of this approach - kids had the opportunity to acknowledge the emotion which helped them to detach. And the teacher was able to quickly spot where further follow-up or intervention might be needed.

Yours in learning and filmmaking.

Ramona