A Culture of Collaboration in Education PT 4

Hello again. We’re approaching the end of our time together and I hope what you’ve been reading has been helpful.

To recap, Brain-Based Teaching and Learning involves adults creating conditions to help increase student motivation, participation, and long-term retention, by tapping into the natural ways the brain receives, processes, and stores information through our five senses. It assembles the information in our memory, whether it comes through a joke, a story, a creative activity, or music. When information is presented in a manner that can vastly improve the learning experience, it enhances the brain’s ability to process. Brain-based learning supports:

· Self-retention

· Higher academic performance

· Resilience

· Long-term memory

· Brain health and function

· Mood

· Classroom cooperation motivation

· A positive attitude

I received a comment since writing these articles: “all this sounds like it can only be achieved at a home school or private tutoring setting”. I understand the thinking, but it is possible for both public and private students. Let me share an example of a brain-based theme that one of my sons experienced at his primary school and still talks about today, 15 years later.

Plan in action

When he was in Standard Two, his class teacher combined a list of topics to be learned that term from the syllabus. She integrated the topics. So first, for English, they wrote a Creative Writing essay about the choice of career. Second, for Math, they designed what their business would look like using the concepts of area and perimeter to draw a floor plan. Lastly, for Social Studies, they had to explain how they would operate the business, where it would be located, and the role that they would play in the business. Those three subjects covered integration and they were all from the school curriculum, but this teacher found a way to cover the needed classwork for the term in a shorter, more creative way. The students were all excited about putting it together. They did the floor plan using math measurements, demonstrating how well they learned area and perimeter.

The students made their own advertisements on posters including the name of the business. My son’s group decided to do the bank. On the day for the presentations, it was a lively class, everybody dressed according to their career and presented themselves as banker, pharmacist, farmer, or businessmen. The classroom was transformed: the desks and chairs were arranged to look like offices with the names of their businesses. Each group had to demonstrate what their own topic was about and explain at the end what they learned from doing all three together. They did their research and worked together, owning and taking responsibility for their project.