Taking Center Stage – Act II (TCSII)

A Portal for Middle Grades Educators

Professional Learning Activities

Zadina 1—Brain Matters:
Research on Learning

Take Action: Apply the concepts

To begin:

Compete the following initial activities designed to help educators implement the brain-compatible practices suggested by Dr. Zadina.

How the Brain Learns: Three Principles

Principle 1: Learning involves making connections

1. Activity: Knowing that learning is built upon prior knowledge, think about a lesson you recently taught.
• What steps did you take to help students make connections to prior knowledge?
• If you didn’t reach all students, what other examples or activities could you have used?
  
2. Activity: Choose a lesson that you normally teach in which students may not have any prior knowledge on that subject (i.e., a lesson about the Ice Age with students who have never touched snow). Brainstorm ways that you could build connections to concepts students do understand as a way of introducing the idea of the lesson.
   
3. Activity: Explore more on TCSII:
   • Adolescent characteristics (Recommendation 4)
   • Questioning strategies (Recommendation 2)
   • Connections to prior knowledge (Recommendation 2)
   • Scaffolding (Recommendation 2)
   • “People Search,” page 3 of Content area reading graphic organizers (DOC; 241 KB; 44pp.)

Principle 2: Use it or lose it!

1. Activity: How can you incorporate topics that students perceive as important into your lessons?
• Write down student comments that you have heard both in the classroom and during passing periods.
• Based on those comments, list the themes that are important to your students.
• Identify ways to incorporate those themes in your lesson planning.
  
2. Activity: Think about a challenging lesson that you will be teaching in the near future. Explore different ways to present a lesson that will:
• Connect with prior knowledge
• Engage students
• Encourage critical thinking
• Allow for physical activities (such as representing an idea with their bodies or building a model).
  
3. Activity: Explore more on TCSII:
• View the TCSII videos on Kinesthetic Learning to see how a science teacher demonstrates the three states of matter by directing student movement.
  • Kinesthetic Learning, Part I (WMV; 5:36) | MOV
  • Kinesthetic Learning, Part II (WMV; 5:04) | MOV
• Meaningful participation (Recommendation 4)
• Academic literacy (Recommendation 1)
• Vocabulary development (Recommendation 1)
• Critical thinking (Recommendation 1)
• Reading across the curriculum (Recommendation 1)
• Writing across the curriculum (Recommendation 1)
  

Principle 3: It’s not enough to fire it; you have to wire it!

1. Activity: Choose one of the California Standards that will be taught to your students. Brainstorm different ways to repeat information so that the knowledge or skill (connections in the brain) will be strengthened.

2. Activity: List types of authentic assessments that would tell you when a student has built fluency (gained mastery).
   
3. Activity: Reflect on a lesson you recently taught. If you could reteach it based on what you learned from Dr. Zadina, how would you make it more rigorous (effortful)?
   
4. Activity: Explore more on TCSII:
   • Rigor in the Classroom with Dr. Douglas Reeves (video and professional learning activity)
   • Questioning strategies (Recommendation 2)
   • Paying Attention (Adolescent Development, Recommendation 2)
   • Real-world connections (Recommendation 4)
   • Memory Retention (Adolescent Development, Recommendation 3)
   • Service-learning and Project-based learning, (Recommendation 4)
     

Then, proceed to:

• Take it Away: Make it happen at your school—identify support and resources needed for implementation

Zadina 1 Index

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