Rebels With Applause: Brain Compatible Approaches For Motivating Reluctant Learners
Motivation strategies
1. show a question to think about (metacognition)
2. short questions to answer
3. music in the background
4. chimes
5. guessing
6. activities (tongue clicking)
7. repetition (with pauses)
8. review and recap
9. applause
10. safety (pre-empting, will not call on participants unless you want to answer, gentle high-five, gestures if we do not understand speaker, introduction of frisbee – physical and emotional, introduction of tetris – emotional)
11. procedures
12. unusual times
13. relevance
14. enthusiasm
15. choral recital
16. high five (physical connection when customers connect with cashiers at stores)
17. personal connections
18. laughter
19. pauses for engagement
20. movement (student and teacher)
Behavioural problem or a slow learner?
- Need for efficacy and power
- How do you love and care for a slow learner
An environment which is meaningful, challenging and in which the students’ minds are actively engaged.
Visuals (let visuals do our work)
1. What’s today’s lesson materials
2. Seeing themselves motivated and ready
3. Having group project
4. Readiness to learn rubric
5. Test taking
6. Circulation ring
7. Putting supplies away
8. Dismissal rubric
9. Wall of readiness
Effective procedures
1. Assume the best
2. High expectations
3. Clear road map
4. Practice
The more words we use, the less powerful each word becomes.
How might you use visuals / rubrics to teach or reinforce procedures in your classroom / school?
Rat experiment: Rats’ brains are equally unstimulated if they are watching an activity compared to being totally isolated from the activity.
Attention + Connection + (Collaborative) Rehearsal = Long Term Retention
Attention
1. Selective – filters out input
2. Up to 3 seconds – auditory
The cocktail party effect
The mind can pay conscious attention to only one thought at a time.
Implications in the classroom:
How do students take notes and listen at the same time?
Solutions:
1. Teach note-taking
2. The Runaway Stage Coach Principle (allow students to be distracted for a while before drawing them back)
3. Stop, look and listen
Music
- start
- close
- movement / transitions
- during students conversations
Emotion is the envelope of learning. Music makes the envelope bigger.
Connection
1. Connect to previous experience
2. Create a new experience together
Meaning leads to memory.
Reciprocal teaching strategy
Ask students to teach one another about a concept that was just taught.
General guideline: pause every 10-12 minutes to engage actively with the material
Strategies:
1. Summary
2. Highlights
3. Rhyme / rap / song
4. Slogan (e.g. just do it)
5. Comparison (e.g. comparing photosynthesis with a fan)
6. Question? (come out with a question that the student does not know about)
7. Question! (come out with a question that the student knows about)
8. Translation (e.g. translate the Declaration of Indepedence to someone that a primary 4 can understand)
9. Speculation
10. Acronym (e.g ROY G BIV, BODMAS)
11. Alliteration (e.g. singing and slogans sure seem to serve Sally)
12. Examples
13. Reflection
Modalities:
1. Writing
2. Out loud with partner
3. Drawing
4. Out loud with teacher
5. Silent think time
What are some ways to have positive connections with students?
1. 2 minutes a day, 10 days in a row have a personal connection with them
2. Build in choices for students
3. Seeing the good in them
Where can I build-in student choices?
1. Alternatives to assignment
2. Kids teaching each other
3. Project-based learning
4. Community service
Strategies for participation
1. 8 raised hands (need at least 8 students to raise their hands before calling out on them)
2. All raised hands
3. Over the shoulder (look over the shoulder and tell the student that he / she is right)
4. Class consultant (ask someone else to answer and for the shy one to agree or disagree)
5. Answer or echo (either answer the question or echo the correct answer later)
6. I don’t know … yet
7. I’ll come back to you
8. But what I do know is …
9. Advanced notice (pre-emptive success)
The Pyramid Game
Student facing the screen needs to give hints to the student facing away to guess the words.
Make a list of eight words that you could use with your students to play the game.
Arguing With The Ref
Before argument: Proximity, teacher look, calling out name, giving consequence (student argues with teacher)
Arguing is in and of itself a disruption deserving a second consequence.
Student lawyers start on a higher level of the consequence hierarchy (NBA rules).
