District Administration - December 2012 - (Page 42)

Neuroscience in Schools and their ability to learn. Schools can provide role models and activities that build these cognitive skills and also provide an environment that is safe, non-stressful, that engage children in fun activities and also build their physical fitness. Jenkins adds that “one of the hottest research areas for early learners in cognitive science is focused on the development of executive function skills, or those skills that enable us to control impulses, make plans and stay focused and accomplish our goals.” And more remarkably, students can do more than what school district leaders have them doing now. “They can be doing so much more than we’ve been having them do,” adds Lou Whitaker, the principal at Pope John Paul II Catholic School in Lecanto, Fla. At the Jacob Shapiro Brain-Based Instruction Laboratory School in the Oshkosh Area Public Schools, students make right angles to demonstrate right, acute and obtuse angles for math. And the more properties, like sight and movements, students can attach to learning, the greater chance they will make a stable neural network in their brains. The World of Brain-Based Education Training teachers in brain-based education is just what Leslie Owen Wilson—an education professor at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater—has been doing for the past decade. “It was long overdue,” she says about the movement toward brainbased education. “As early as the 1970s and ’80s, researchers in neurosciences were looking at data from PET scans (images of organs and tissues), CAT scans, and MRIs of the brain. All these little pieces were out there and the time had come” to turn them At the Hale (Mich.) Area Schools, an elementary school teacher helps students use Brainware software to enhance the patterning of ELA and math concepts. 42 December 2012 to educational use. The principles that Wilson teaches graduate students include understanding the brain is social and develops better in concert with other brains; that the search for meaning comes through patterning; and that learning engages the whole body. While approaches like these may already be familiar to some classrooms, brain-based education advocates, including Wilson, insist they should be more widely practiced. Matthew Peterson, the co-founder and senior scientist at the MIND Research Institute, a neuroscience and education non-profit, explains that much of learning “does not happen unless you are active, not by passively watching television or listening to a teacher lecture.” That activity—which can range from doing a puzzle to manipulating objects in the surrounding environment to physically moving the body—engages the neo-cortex, the outer layer of the brain responsible for such functions as cognition, problem solving, and abstraction. Elementary teachers at the Pope John Paul II school use “reciprocal teaching” to keep the kids mentally active. “Once the students learn something, they have to teach it to another child,” explains Whitaker. “Every day, the teacher will cover a 15-minute lesson and then say, ‘Now turn to your partner, and explain what you just learned. Now switch.” That lesson may cover a reading passage, a science exercise, or a way of doing math problems, but Whitaker stresses that being able to mentally organize and then verbalize that learning makes a big differ- ence in the students’ learning. “The more parts of the brain they engage, the better their chance of remembering the lesson.” Teachers at the school also take a multisensory approach, the better to activate the brain, Whitaker says—by presenting content in various colors, playing music in the classrooms and having young students sing—the alphabet song is popular—and even adding a kinesthetic dimension by having them write the letters of the alphabet in shaving cream. “The letters become more memorable that way,”” Whitaker says. The school even educates its youngest students on the parts of the brain and how they function so they better understand the learning approaches that improve that function. At a recent open house, students and their parents could walk through an oversized model of the brain with the key components on display. “We even had dendrites hanging there,” Whitaker recalls. Building Memory At Jacob Shapiro Brain-Based Instruction Laboratory School, a 6-year-old elementary charter in the Oshkosh (Wis.) Area Public Schools, the teachers are trained in the biology and psychology of the brain. Such knowledge is invaluable in closely observing and questioning individual students to make sure they are ready to learn, emphasizes Principal Lynn Brown, who adds that angry or unhappy students do not make good learners. Teachers focus on moving student brain activity from the limbic region (the seat of those angry or unhappy feelings) District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - December 2012

District Administration - December 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Special Education
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Fab Lab: Using Technology to Make (Almost) Anything!
Neuroscience in Schools
Three Squares at School
Top 100 DA Readers Choose Innovative Products of the Year
CIO News
Problem Solution
Crisis Response
Online Edge
Going Mobile

District Administration - December 2012