As we learn more about how the brain works, through the miracle of modern science, it becomes incumbent upon Any teacher worth their salt, to incorporate this science into their instruction. In the same way a person wouldn't try to install Safari on a PC, knowing that Safari is software specific to a Mac, we shouldn't try to install software into the minds of children that is incompatible with the workings of their mind.
To that end, I will be sharing with you a project that I did with my students, which incorporates strategies, based hon modern understanding of how the brain works. This project incorporates the following:
The making of personal connections: The brain naturally wishes to form patterns to create meaning. The best way to facilitate this is to provide students with topics and materials that connect to their own lives and interests.
The use of reflection. “We can give our students content, content, content, but if we don't give them time to chew it over, to reflect and to connect it to their own lives, the learning is not as meaningful as it could be.” (Perez, 2018)
The importance of meaningful feedback:“Educational researchers have long stressed the value of feedback for keeping learning on track Savvy classroom teachers use a range of formative assessment strategies to check in on understanding and address misconceptions early. Not surprisingly, feedback is a Cornerstone of brain-based learning.” 6-tips
Variety of presentation of learning: It's good to play to the strengths of the individual students in your room, and one of the ways to do that is to provide them different functions within a group and different ways to present what they have learned.
Making learning social. “Quote. Every brain has a need to belong. Recent research supports that learning is emotional and often based on relationships.” (Sprenger, 2014)
Real world application for reading.“The brain responds best in a learning environment when it can make the connection between the learning going on and real life applications.” (Perez, 2018)
Key Strategies employed in this project are:
PBL: When reading, science, and math are taught is ends unto themselves, they become abstractions to students, and this disengages them as their brains are feverishly seeking the meaning of everything they learn.Project-Based Learning makes reading, science, and math a means to relevant ends.These are tools students can use to solve problems and develop skills and knowledge truly necessary for all futures.
Successful grouping, based on student interest and competency:The group work you will read about here applies Lev Vygotsky's theory of the Zone of Proximal Development, a philosophy which is strongly supported by Modern brain science, in which students, put in groups, balancing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, successfully collaborate, taking a very active role in their learning.
Constructing a learning environment:Remember Maslow?Remember Bandura?Well, their reasoning about a safe culture in which learning can occur is back up by brain science.With a good teacher model, and with good peer models, students learn better. “The discovery of mirror neurons has lent biological support to the theory of social learning. Although research is in its infancy the recent discovery of "mirror neurons" in primates may constitute a neurological basis for imitation.” (McLeod, 2016)
All of these brain-based elements can be seen in the following project. See if you can spot how and where they're happening.
When I was in school, nearly a century ago, or as my students remind me, about when the pyramids were being constructed, teachers got up, stern-faced and serious, disconnected from the kids in their classroom on a human basis, and they lectured us for over an hour, insisting that we take notes, assuming we would understand what to take notes about, and they would drone on, simply transmitting facts, these inert little items that, in and of themselves, do nothing. If it wasn't the lecture, it was a film, also accompanied by note taking, also providing inert facts devoid of meaning. Stage 2 of this process was the quiz. Each of us would go home, cram the night before, based on our copious, largely meaningless notes, and cross our fingers that we could get an A or a B the next day. No matter how we did on the quiz, the moment we were done with it, all of the subject matter vanished from long-term memory forever. I remember virtually nothing from any of the classes I took in social studies in middle school and high school.
As a teacher, I refuse to perpetuate the mistakes that my teachers made with me, and to prevent this from happening, I work to learn as much about how students learn as I can, and learning about how the brain develops literacy is a huge support in ensuring that students can truly acquire content in social studies, and beyond that, being a classroom environment that is positive,
nurturing, and gods help us, anything but boring.
To achieve this, one has to work with students to co-construct this environment. This means that it cannot be all about the teacher. “Co-constructing knowledge means giving up the myself and them role of teacher and students and fully embracing the wonder and journey of us.” (Alber,2014) I do project-based learning in social studies, and when I do my work to plan each new project, I incorporate student feedback. I learn what they liked and did not like about previous projects, and I ask them in advance, within the framework of the content that I must teach in future projects, how best they feel they would learn it and what would make it interesting for them.
This is part of the planning process, because I want my students to be able to make connections to the reading and research I'm going to need them to do. “…students, if asked, have much to say about teaching and learning that can help schools become more effective educational environments for them, and as such, student voice can be a powerful tool for improving student performance and closing the achievement gap (The Education Alliance, 2004)
An increasing amount of Research indicates that incorporating student voice into the classroom improve student engagement and learning outcomes. Working with students to develop instruction engages their interest in the content but also validates them as human beings in your environment. You make them part of the process, rather than the customary victims of the process. Makes learning a social as well as an academic process, and would ultimately make Abraham Maslow pleased as punch. An important component of establishing this new system is to, “’Brainstorm an on-going class list of ‘stuff" they want to know about and are interested in -- a phenomena, an event, a law, for
example. If you are a science, math, or history teacher, you can ask that it be about those topics, but I also encourage you to have it be about anything (and then you can find connections to content later).” (Alber, 2014)
My most recent project was called Sustainable New Mexico. After the 2016 election, students had been increasingly asking me to teach them how to better participate in government, and this became an opportunity to do that. Students were allowed to research different executive departments from New Mexico, such as CYFD, the Department of Agriculture, PED, and so on. Groups were formed based upon which departments students wish to focus on and the need to vary skill sets in reading and research. After learning about their specific Department, I challenged them to research problems in New Mexico related to their chosen department. Students identified a minimum of three problems per Department, at which point they were asked to select one or two problems they would like to work on solving. When each group selected the problems they wished to solve, I facilitated their work by assisting them in finding the resources they needed to do so, varied in complexity as well as media. The learning was driven by the students, not by me. Their level of Engagement it surprised even me. “…the brain responds best in a learning environment when it can make the connection between the learning going on and real-life applications. The brain is more alert and pays more attention to that learning when it is connected to material that is perceived to be useful in real life.” (Perez, 2018)
In addition to providing resources that allowed students to make personal connections to their reading and research, time to reflect about what they'd read and what they've learned was crucial. To that end, students were given multiple opportunities, individually, within their small groups, and even as a whole class, to reflect about the credibility of their research, the quality of the information they were discovering, the adequacy ofthe manner in which they were solving their problems, and fundamentally, what they were learning about government. “Engaging, metacognitive activities, which on the surface may seem to take time away from learning valuable content, are actually activities that can enhance, enrich, and extend the learning of the material that is being reflected upon to become part of the student’s long-term memory system.” (Perez, 2018)
I can honestly guarantee you that my middle school students know more about how to participate in their democracy and how government works than most voting adults do. The research they did and the proposals they derived from said research, inspired me with the thought that I would rather have my middle school students run this country than the people who actually are running it. This is not hyperbole.
We worked together, bringing each group's proposals into one single proposal. We revised and edited this final proposal as a whole class. On May 2nd 2018, in our television Production Studio at Media Arts Collaborative Charter School, my middle school students presented their proposals to Michelle Lujan Grisham (running for governor), Jackie Apodaca (whose husband, Jeff, had been running for governor), Michelle Garcia Holmes (running for lieutenant governor), Brian colon (running for state auditor), Damon Martinez who was running for Congress), Janice Arnold-Jones (running for Congress), Deb Armstrong, and Sheryl Williams-Stapleton (both members of the state’s House of Representatives), all of whom graciously came to receive it. They were impressed with the compassion of my students, seeing that the problems they chose to solve were motivated by an earnest desire to help other human beings, and they were also impressed by the nature of the ideas presented and the professionalism with which the proposal was created.
All I did was create the challenge, provide the resources as needed, and facilitate the work. My days of getting up in front of a class as a lecturer died 3 years ago when I embraced project-based learning, and I will never go back to being that teacher again. This is how a social studies teacher, or any teacher, regardless of content, can harness work strategies, based in good science, to improve learning for kids.
Sources Cited
Alber, R. (n.d.). 5 Ways to Give Your Students More Voice and Choice. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/five-strategies-more-voice-choice-students-rebecca-alber
Education Alliance, The. (2004). A Summary of Research on Using Student Voice in School Improvement Planning. www.educationalliance.org
Perez. (n.d.). Brain-Based Literacy Learning. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
This is the most information I was able to find about this resource.
Mcleod, S. (2016). Social Learning Theory. Retrieved July 3, 2018, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html