Brain Rules 1-6

On April 1, 2014 a few of my classmates and I had a discussion about the reading we had previously read before class. We read the first 6 rules out of 12 in the book Brain Rules written by John Medina. The first six rules listed were Exercise, Survival, Wiring, Attention, Short-Term Memory, and Long-Term Memory. These are all very important rules to help you understand how the brain works and why it works that way. When knowing this information, it can help you incorporate things in your classroom to help your students to succeed. 

RULE #1: Exercise boosts brainpower

 We all know exercise is good for the body. But it's extremely good for the brain, too. Exercise kills harmful stress chemicals. It boosts problem solving, planning and attention. John Medina made it very clear that exercise helps children to do better in the classroom. “Physically fit children identify visual stimuli much faster than sedentary ones. They appear to concentrate better” (Medina 18). He stated that brains develop while working out, not lounging around. Researchers did a study and found that exercisers outperform couch potatoes in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, and fluid-intelligence tasks. He also mentioned that if you do aerobic exercise for 30 minutes two or three times a week, then you would gain cognitive benefit.

In this section of the reading Medina thought of an out of the box idea that, what if during a lesson, the children were not sitting at a desk but walking 1 to 2 miles per hour on a treadmill. He then asked if it would change their academic performance? During our discussion I asked the group what they had thought of that idea. First off they mentioned that it wouldn’t be productive to be walking that slow, because Medina noted that aerobic exercise is what benefits the brain, and walking isn’t an aerobic exercise. They then mentioned that maybe if they sped it up that it may work, but then it would just turn into a distraction and ware the students out to where the children would lose focus. My group thought that instead of walking on a treadmill to maybe have the children sit on a fitness ball, it gives them better posture and the opportunity to move a little without being distracting. Ashley had mentioned that she likes to do her homework on an exercise ball, it helps her focus more, and when she starts to lose her concentration she gets up, takes a walk and gathers herself back to get her work done. In a previous discussion we had also mentioned to have the students stand at their desks during a lesson instead of sitting, and that may also help the students to stay focused.

To keep the children active throughout the long school day, we came up with possibly switching seats after a lesson, or moving around before continuing the next task. For example maybe having the students all get up from their seats and lead them through some stretches, or let them wiggle their bodies, or even have them go take a lap outside and come back in quietly.

RULE #2: The human brain evolved, too

The brain is a survival organ, its job is to keep us alive long enough to pass on our genes. 

Our brains became much bigger than our evolutionary counterparts'. It takes more brainpower to solve complicated problems.

 

Our brain is designed to:

·      Solve problems

·      Related to surviving

·      In an unstable outdoor environment

·      To do so in nearly constant motion

Brains are adapted this way simply as a survival strategy, to help us live long enough to pass our genes on to the next generation.

RULE #3: Every brain is wired differently

What you do in life physically changes what your brain looks like. You can wire and rewire yourself with the simple choice of which musical instrument or professional sport you play. The human brain, only partially constructed at birth, won’t be fully assembled for years to come. Every given brain is wired differently; what you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like – it literally rewires it. Various regions of the brain develop at different rates in different people. No two people’s brains store the same information in the same way in the same place, not even twins.

Medina talks about smaller class sizes, he states, “Students comprehend complex knowledge at different times and different depths. Because a teacher can keep track of only so may minds, there must be a limit on the number of students in a class-the smaller-the better." Lauren was wondering, “If small class sizes are beneficial, why don't more schools have smaller class sizes?” The answer our group came up with is because of money. Unfortunately, schools don’t have enough money to afford to pay more teachers. We then came up with a way to make the classroom itself feel like it is smaller so that students can get the attention they would get if they were to be in a smaller classroom. We said that if classrooms had aids or parent help we could split the group into two or three to make it seem a little smaller so that those who are afraid to speak up and ask for help may now come forward and ask because there are less eyes focused on that student. We also decided that working in stations was a really good idea so that the teacher could work with a group of five or six and then rotate stations every ten minutes or so, so that everyone is getting as close to one-on-one help that they can get.

Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things

Better attention always equals better learning. The brain’s attentional “spotlight” can focus on only one thing at a time: no multitasking. Emotional arousal helps the brain learn. You must do something emotionally relevant at each 10-minute mark to regain attention. Audiences check out after 10 minutes, but you can keep grabbing them back by telling narratives or creating events rich in emotion.

Multitasking = more errors

You make three times more errors on a task when interrupted. 

Makayla had asked a great question that led into a good discussion topic, she said, “According to Medina, A hook is very important in gaining the attention of students. Many of us know and refer to a, "hook" as a way of grabbing the attention of a reader in our writing. How might we as educators gain the attention of our students using a, "hook", when ever attention seems to be lacking?”

Our group decided that presenters, or teachers need to use exciting voices, lots of emotion, and/or humor every ten minutes to hook their audience or students and to keep them hooked. We also thought that including them in the discussion would be very helpful, for example maybe asking them questions applied to real life or how they felt about the topic. Another way to keep them engaged was to incorporate games throughout the lesson, which also may refer back to Rule #1 where it states that physical activity increases attention, so if we were to incorporate games then they would be focused and learning in a fun environment.

RULE #5: Repeat to remember

There are many types of memory, from autobiographical to declarative to motor memory. Brain Rules focuses on declarative memory (things you can declare, like "2+2=4"). The brain has many types of memory systems. There are four stages of processing: encoding, storing, retrieving, and forgetting. Your brain can hold about seven pieces of information for 30 seconds. It must be repeated or it disappears. That neuron is waiting for a repeat signal of the information; without it, it resets itself. The more elaborately we encode a memory during its initial moments, the stronger it will be. You can improve your chances in remembering something if you reproduce the environment in which you first put it into your brain.

On page 132 Medina says that repetition is in fact a viable way to increase a person's memory. In our discussion we were trying to find the balance between when is a good time to repeat things and when not to. We came to conclusion that it would be a good idea to teach a topic, move on, and come back to it later. For example if your students are learning their times tables, as they move on to the higher numbers review the ones they have learned before, so that they don’t forget the previous numbers as they move on. As we were discussing the topic repetition the saying practice makes perfect popped into my head, where I then came up with repetition makes perfection. For example people who play sports practice the same thing over and over again on the daily to make themselves better, so in the school setting repetition is also a good thing, because the more you do something the more it comes natural to the person.

RULE #6: Remember to repeat

The way to make long-term memory more reliable is to incorporate new information gradually and repeat it in timed intervals. Missing one piece of information hurts a student's ability to understand new information related to it. That's why repetition in the classroom is crucial. The more elaborately something is encoded when learning is occurring, the more likely it is to be retained. The more something is repeated, the more likely it is to be remembered.

Works Cited

Medina, John. Brain rules: 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school. Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2008. Print.

Vulliemoz, Serge, Olivier Raineteau, and Denis Jabaudon. "Reaching beyond the midline: why are human brains cross wired?." The Lancet Neurology 4.2 (2005): 87-99. Print.