The science behind learning, for me, is much more important than the politics. Just found a good list of 20 teaching tips derived from brain research.
- The brain learns from its environment. Enrich the learning environment.
- One’s personal, emotional state greatly influences what is recalled during a learning episode. Deal with emotional influences in your classroom before teaching.
- Prime the brain for learning. Provide visual outlines or show select pictures representing different parts of the upcoming lesson.
- give the brain time to process verbal information. Pause 3-7 seconds between important statements.
- Wait 5 seconds after asking a factual question and 10 seconds after asking a complex question.
- Present, rehearse, apply, then review.
- Develop concept before content.
- Teach by asking questions.
- Teach pattern recognition. Often.
- Research suggests that neurons need some downtime to consolidate information. Teach new information over time, providing periodic review.
- The % of information remembered increases as the learning episode shortens and decreases as the lesson time lengthens.
- Change the type of instruction or student activity every 20 minutes.
- Teach students how to ask great questions while they are reading.
- Periodically, have students record/share 3 things they learned from the lesson or 3 things they found interesting.
- Sleep is required to store information into long term memory. John Hopkins University found that it takes 6 hours for a new skill to be consolidated and tagged for long term storage. (Teenagers need at least 9 hours of sleep a night).
- Have students listen to music before writing and spatial reasoning activities.
- On average, learners will only remember 5% of a lecture 24 hours after it is given. However, they will remember 90% of the information 24 hours later if they teach it to someone else.
- Use personal, white, dry erase boards in class to check for understanding as you are teaching.
- Very specific and positive comments will be remembered over time and will be immediately motivating to the students.
and then, just to keep bloggers happy,
- Journaling has been found to improve memory and cognition. It enhances motivation to read and reading comprehension.