Right brain classroom tips

[Mandabplus3]

I was looking for some info on right brain teaching in the classroom and found this. I thought some of you would find it interesting. It really picks up on the safe secure learning environment as well as the building on previous knowledge teaching ideas. Personally I was looking for someway of making sure my right brained learner gets what she needs in this years classroom. I learnt so far that written instructions are useless to her and that when she is " off with the fairies" she is still obsorbing information, this is her way of concentrating. Wonder how I will go explaining that to her teacher  

Recent Research Suggests   
Teaching Suggestions

The brain performs many functions simultaneously. Learning is enhanced by a rich environment with a variety of stimuli.   
Present content through a variety of teaching strategies, such as physical activities, individual learning times, group interactions, artistic variations, and musical interpretations to help orchestrate student experiences.

Learning engages the entire physiology. Physical development, personal comfort, and emotional state affect the ability to learn.   
Be aware that children mature at different rates; chronological age may not reflect the student's readiness to learn.

Incorporate facets of health (stress management, nutrition, exercise) into the learning process.

The search for meaning is innate. The mind's natural curiosity can be engaged by complex and meaningful challenges.   
Strive to present lessons and activities that arouse the mind's search for meaning.

The brain is designed to perceive and generate patterns.   
Present information in context (real life science, thematic instruction) so the learner can identify patterns and connect with previous experiences.

Emotions and cognition cannot be separated. Emotions can be crucial to the storage and recall of information.   
Help build a classroom environment that promotes positive attitudes among students and teachers and about their work.

Encourage students to be aware of their feelings and how the emotional climate affects their learning.

Every brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes.   
Try to avoid isolating information from its context. This isolation makes learning more difficult.

Design activities that require full brain interaction and communication.

Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception.   
Place materials (posters, art, bulletin boards, music) outside the learner's immediate focus to influence learning.

Be aware that the teacher's enthusiasm, modeling, and coaching present important signals about the value of what is being learned.

Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes.   
Use "hooks" or other motivational techniques to encourage personal connections.

Encourage "active processing" through reflection and metacognition to help students consciously review their learning.

We have at least two types of memory: spatial, which registers our daily experience, and rote learning, which deals with facts and skills in isolation.   
Separating information and skills from prior experience forces the learner to depend on rote memory.

Try to avoid an emphasis on rote learning; it ignores the learner's personal side and probably interferes with subsequent development of understanding.

The brain understands best when facts and skills are embedded in natural spatial memory.   
Use techniques that create or mimic real world experiences and use varied senses. Examples include demonstrations, projects, metaphor, and integration of content areas that embed ideas in genuine experience.

Learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat.   
Try to create an atmosphere of "relaxed alertness" that is low in threat and high in challenge.

Each brain is unique. The brain's structure is actually changed by learning.   
Use multifaceted teaching strategies to attract individual interests and let students express their auditory, visual, tactile, or emotional preferences.

Source: From "Understanding a Brain-Based Approach to Learning and Teaching" by R. N. Caine and G. Caine, October 1990, Educational Leadership, 48(2), pp. 66-70. Copyright 1990 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). Adapted by Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) with permission of ASCD.

[Dr Miles R Jones]

Mandab,

That was a great post on Right Brain Learning Tips.  Many very good principles and concepts for teaching effectively.
I did want to point out that Right Brainers like the authors of the article you are quoting often marginalize or even demonize
left brain learning like direct instruction of discrete skills and rote learning.  The article advised to "avoid rote learning".
Our school system has been destroyed by this type of approach.  Students do not know phonics or the multiplication
tables and since teachers are restrained from teaching these things, by rote that is, many students remain stuck there
and no amount of "holistic" learning succeeds in correcting that situation.

There is a ton of research backing up the fact we need to utilize both sides of the brain, discrete left brain skills that
result in assimilating a data base of information and holistic right brain skills that put the puzzle together in context.
I am always leery of "Best Practices" type of lists because they oftentimes give information that is contraindicated
by research.  They are usually not research-based although the author seems to think they are but are more often
a checklist for ideological correctness.  There are vicious wars going on in education between Right Brainers and
Left Brainers.  It is easy to get caught up in it.

It was a great article tho.  Thanks for the feedback.

[Mandabplus3]

As a best practices model it's useful, based on the fact that most teachers never quite get to 100% best practice  it has been useful as a parent in understanding my kids, and as a teacher in understanding some students. It's interesting that in my experience the quickest way to find the right brain dominant students is to let the classroom get noisy and watch who puts their hands over their ears first 
I am not an anti left brain advocate, just for the record, I believe it makes much more sense to switch lefter and lefter as kids get throughout the school years. when the needed ability for conscious recal gets higher.
So my thoughts on your comments.
I have been thinking about this a bit this week due to a comment I read about math. I would love to hear your thoughts. The comment was basically that rote learning isn't necessary in math if kids can do enough equations to remember a fact/answer. So basically saying if kids do enough equations that add up to ten then they will instantly Know which numbers equal 10. I took the over all point to be that kids can have enough different experiences of 7 and 3 together, addition, subtraction, pictures, numerals, and various manipulatives, to KNOW that they make 10 together. Same can be said for times tables. If they calculate it enough times they will remember the answer.
Now I like the idea, it has merit, it promotes understanding on a deeper level. But seriously how many times will I have to create 6x7 before my kids instantly recalls the answer? I am thinking it's a bit like learning to read sight words in the context of reading. In this  I have always found it beneficial to do some explicit instruction on the sight words as well as encourage in context  reading.

[Dr Miles R Jones]

Mandab,

I agreed with 90% of what the Crain article said.  Most of us who work on the practical level with our children are not purists.  We understand instinctively the need to use the whole brain rather than focus on only half of it.  Forgive me, having been through the education mill I know its weaknesses inside out.  Too often, the education "experts" are not even classroom teachers and some have never been.  They spin theories.  These theories usually sound good but frequently do not survive their first encounter with reality. 

In any case, I have been thinking lately that the overwhelming emphasis on "holistic" learning usually ends abruptly when you enter serious academics.  I think that is what you were referring to when you said more left brain discrete learning and memorization is required later on.  My daughter is taking an Anatomy class for medical training.  There will be little flexibility in this course.  Students will learn the massive data base or they will not be nurses or doctors.  Would we have it any other way? The same can be said of advanced mathematics or other technical disciplines.

Your comments made me think.  I have always done it contrary to your scenario.  Early left brain skills like phonics and math operations are essential to open the door to understanding in reading and mathematics, higher order thinking.  The stronger, and broader, the foundation of basic skills the higher the pyramid of higher order thinking can be built.    I am not saying you are wrong it just seems a new way of thinking of it for me.  I have known moms who have done a fabulous job in teaching their children very effectively, and almost exclusively, via right brain learning and arrived at the point where they knew their phonics, numbers, and facts.  So I know it is possible.  However, having worked with so many children myself I know they are not all alike.

This throws off many mothers whose first child may have learned to read like falling off a log.  Just put a book into their hands and read it to them pointing to the words and they were off and running.  For their next child however that may not work at all.  The first was an instinctive right brain learner, the second an instinctive left brain learner.  He demands to understand the mechanics of the process.  He wants to know the sounds and how they are put together.  If we approach it as if all (early) learning "should" be right brained then this child gets let out.  In my estimation and from studying the research, about half of kids can learn to read without direct instruction in phonics.   The others require direct instruction step by step, letter-sounds, sounding out, reading connected discourse in stages from simple to complex, etc.  Two points here, these left brained kids who need direct instruction are no less intelligence.  In fact, they may be more intelligent demanding to understand the process thoroughly not glossing through it.  Second, the right brained kids may, not always, have trouble later when they get out of the range of their normal speaking vocabulary, words which they can guess and into longer, more technical words that they cannot guess.  Here their lack of word attack skills may handicap them.  Many public school kids plateau around fifth grade reading skill.  Usually this will not happen with a home school mom because she is on top of it and will do things to bring their skills along.  Because a child is instinctively right brained or left brained is no reason to cater exclusively to that learning style.  They also need strength in the other way of processing to be an effective learner.  To take a physical example, should we ignore development of one leg because the child instinctively favors the other.  I hope not.

Your description of math skills "doing enough equations that they know the answers" is really a definition of left brain (rote) learning rather than right brain (holistic) learning.  Right brain is more conceptual which is essential as well.  A lack of higher order thinking is like having to do a jigsaw puzzle without the picture of it complete.  However, holistic activities if not well thought out can take too much time for the results obtained.  Color the two bananas yellow and the three apples red and write down below how many fruit there are.   In that period of time my students have practiced 400 math problems.  There has to be a balance though.  Too much poorly planned left brain practice can lead to burn out.  Too little can simply close the doors to many interesting, challenging, well-paid professions later on in life because a sufficient knowledge data base, that old demon of "rote" learning, has never been built.   The conventional wisdom is that one can always bone up later when they become motivated to be a doctor or a jet pilot, but I have found achieving that to be the exception not the rule.  The layers of skill, or lack of them, have already been laid down long ago.  The knowledge pyramid must be completely rebuilt.   

[Mandabplus3]

Well it appears we both are on the same page    As much as I like the idea of doing enough problems in enough diffferent ways to memorize and answer, it's just not practical in the classroom or probably even at home ( maybe if you start at 1 you could do enough equations and times tables but boy that sounds like a lot of work to me)
The article did state to avoid an "emphasis on rote learning" so they aren't totally against it. Which is refreshing! So I am convinced rote learning still has a part to play, as do math drills. I think what I will take from this is that it's a good idea to provide lots of different opportunities for creating the math problems visually, as this can help both the left and right brain dominant students. Probably prior to reading about it I would have allowed one or two demonstrations, now I see a good case for as many as time permits. I just can't see it being possible to calculate out times tables enough times to memorize them at school. As a mum at home teaching well maybe....but side by side with some rote learning and drills can't hurt.
As to the phonics I have seem many kids plateau off much earlier with a lack of phonics training, at grade 2 reading they get stuck. These are the kids who never intuit the phonics rules, and just know their sight words as whole words and rely on pictures for the other words.  I am a believer in providing all kids with systematic phonics training. No right brain article can change that

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