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The article is from the link: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/understanding-how-the-brain-thinks-judy-willis-md
This very informative article is about how the brain works and how we, as educators, must do our best to help our students' brains work to their highest potential. According to Judy Wills, MD (the author of the article), our educational system -- and those of other countries as well -- focus specifically on too many facts and neglect the higher order thinking skills that are needed.
Instead of helping students see connections between information and facts, new insights and concepts, the educational system tries to cram every little detail into the minds of children. This rote learning complimented the factory-styled school system set up to educate the soon-to-be factory workers in the early 20th Century.
As a result of this, students are not developing the neural connections that are needed to develop higher-level thinking skills in the higher brain area. As a result, the brain prunes those deeper-level connections out and students are not able to develop into their fullest potential. Instead of being able to think and construct new informaiton, analyze and synthesize, prioritize and deduce, students are stuck in a very basic learning landscape and never attain what they could be.
This article is something that really stuck with me. As a teacher, I do my best to relate information that they are learning to stuff that they have learned in their past, past lessons, or even other classes. The more connections that they can make, the more students can see the overall concepts and ideas. From there, they can begin to develop their higher-level thinking skills and become better thinkers. Furthermore, the needed connections for higher-level thinking skills will not be pruned by the brain, but instead will be further developed.
In English, I try to have students see the relationship between stories that they have read with real life issues. As we continue to delve further into our readings, I have students see the connections between the current readings and their past readings. Comparison and contrast essays often help students to recognize the connections between things much better.
In World History, I force students to see patterns that are found within all the human societies that we have studied. That way they can see how different areas of the world are connected. Instead of seeing things in isolation, I try to help students see the connectivity between various issues that we have studied. I also urge students to bring in issues that they've heard / read about and connect them to the topics that we study. In doing so, they start to develop the ability to perceive connections. Their higher-level thinking neurons are being strengthened and will avoid being pruned.
The ideas in this article are ideas that I try to instill within my classroom. I often explain to students the way we think. This article illustrates many important concepts that I must continue to develop within my classroom.
Willis, Judy, MD. "PD Summer: Understanding How the Brain Thinks" (part 1 of 4). 13 June 2011. Web, Edutopia. 26 June 2011. <http://www.edutopia.org/blog/understanding-how-the-brain-thinks-judy-willis-md>.
This is an interesting post. It is so true that if you can relate information together students seem to learn more.
ReplyDeleteWe have learning communities where I work in higher education. These are individual courses that are linked together. The same students attend all the courses so they are able to form little "communities". The instructors work closely together to relate the different subject matters. So maybe they align English, Speech, and psychology together. By doing this, they have found that the learning that takes place is of better quality.