Brain Based Teaching & Learning: Reflection Part 2

The brain is more receptive to learning when stimulated by novelty (Sousa, 2006). Perhaps students retain so little at times because their brains are simply bored by the routine and the predictability of a typical classroom. To keep up with the novel stimuli of today’s ever growing technological society, teachers have a much higher calling to include multi-sensory instruction in their classrooms. Students are better able to attach meaning through multi-sensory instruction (Sousa, 2006). The simple act of standing up and moving for a minute or two allows the brain more blood and oxygen, which may give students the energy and attention to engage the material for another 20 minutes. In addition to movement, other “brain breaks” include humor, visuals, and music.

As I go back to the classroom this fall, I want to make a conscious decision to give my students “brain breaks” and to create several brain state changes throughout the period. While I try to use humor in the classroom frequently, I hope to be a bit more purposeful in how and when I use humor, keeping more in focus the need for brain state changes about every 10 minutes. I always knew some generic benefits of humor including lightening the mood, helping students to relate to the material, and connecting learning with having fun, but I did not previously understand how much humor actually helps the brain to learn by fueling the brain with more oxygen and stimulating the frontal lobe with more endorphins (Sousa, 2006). Visually, I try to give my students opportunities to see what we are discussing, often through overhead transparencies and through PowerPoint presentations. While I still believe these are great strategies, another way to encourage multi-sensory stimulation is to have the students create their own visuals including mind maps, flip books, and study fold books. Though I struggled at first to review my thoughts in pictures during these activities, as I practiced, I was more convinced of the benefits of thinking in pictures and symbols in addition to words, and I hope to try these strategies with my students. I have always wanted to use music in the classroom, but at this point have only used it occasionally when a specific song related to a current topic and we could analyze the lyrics in relation to other class discussion. After personally experiencing the effect of music (during both “brain break” activities and silent reading time) in the classroom and after reading about the benefits of multi-sensory instruction, I hope to utilize music in my classroom more frequently. A tangible goal I think I can reasonably manage at this point is to have music playing as students enter the classroom to help gain their attention and stimulate their brains. I would also like to use music during times when I have students moving around the classroom during review or brief cooperative learning activities. Along this line, I would like to be more purposeful about getting my students up and moving, not only to increase oxygen and blood flow to the brain, but also to increase synergy within my classroom. A new term to me in this class, synergy puts a specific name to the idea of “working together [to] increase each other’s effectiveness” (Sousa, 2006, p. 72). Structures that I found effective for increasing synergy and that I hope to utilize in my classroom include appointment clocks, shoulder and face partners, dancing, telephone, and exercise partners, “find someone who…,” “group, freeze, share,” and “quiz, quiz, trade,” among several others. When using structures such as these, I want to be very purposeful in giving my students time to reflect on their learning before reviewing and in holding my students accountable for their learning after reviewing with their pairs (Sousa, 2006).