Engage for Learning

I was really excited to have another chance to hear Ernie Mendes speak, I truly get inspired while at the relieved when he presents his ideas.I think he gets kids and the classroom environment and the perspective of the teacher.

At least we have his book to read and eachother to discuss our experiences and ideas with.

Thanks for joining this blog. For those of my friends in far away places please try to get the book or look up some of the ideas or just add your thought when you see something you would like to discuss.

Brain Research

"There are more communication fibers moving from the social and emotional centers in the brain to the higher order thinking sites than visa-versa...The amygdala resides next door to the hippocampus a learning and memory structure." pg. 13 I knew social emotional was significant but wow hardwired.

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Comment by Julia on February 1, 2011 at 10:44pm: Engage 4 Learning

Processing ....processing.......processing.

Lots of firsts and lasts

reflection

Less is more

What do you think

Comment by Audrey Hovannesian on February 8, 2011 at 10:47am: Principle One: Our brains focus for a specific amount of time before experiencing mental fatigue and boredom. Losing students' attention or focus is often a redult of too much blah-blah-blah by the teacher without allowing time for processing. Out short-term-working memory can only hold a limited amount of information. Rehearsing and processing new content are ways to hold information in short-term memory and move it to long-term memory storage.

Question 1: How can I facilitate more quality thinking, remembering, and learning?

Comment by Audrey Hovannesian on February 8, 2011 at 10:48am: Wow these are some short chapters in a pretty big font! It is nice that it is an easy read, but I would have liked to see some more theory behind some of his suggestions, especially when he discusses the almost formula for determining how much time a person can focus on a lecture.

I did like his suggestion about having students write summaries in the context of telling a friend what they missed when they were absent or went to the bathroom for a few minutes. How many times does that happen in a day! I know my most difficult part of lessons is getting to the reflection part. I would like to try some of his strategies, like the triad.

Comment by Audrey Hovannesian on February 8, 2011 at 10:48am: Chapter 2: Retaining. This was a great chapter to read because there were so many connections between article and presentations we had in the last two weeks here at school. During the AVID presentation, it was discussed that as teachers we should be stressing good eating habits as does Item 2 in the chapter. In staff meeting last Firday we were given a paper on the Curve of Forgetting. The curve explains the amount of content comprehension after 1,2,7 days. Item 3 in chapter 2 is Review, which follows the concept of the Curve of Forgetting, implying that we need to review often and at specific time intervals.

I especially liked Item 9 and 10. Both are about location. In Item 9 location is discussed in terms of teacher location. This concept not only reinforces proximity, but is also talking about creating "mental folders" for students. Each time the teacher moves their location they stimulate student minds to make new connections to the content based solely on the change in the physical location of the teacher.

Item 10 made me wonder if creating seating charts for Monday and Wednesday that differ from Tuesday and Thursday may really help engage students. It would be nice to have all students experience being in the front or the back of the room each week. I'm not sure if this would eat up too much class time though.

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