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POSITIVE

INTERACTIVE
MOTIVATE
COMMUNICATE
KNOWLEDGE
POSITIVE
UNDERSTANDING
ANALYSIS
MANAGEMENT
STUDENTS
DISCUSSION
LEARNING
BRAIN
COMMUNICATE
BRAIN
PLAN
SUCCESS FULL

Great
Teaching
TEACHERS

Joanna Brown

TEACHERS

DISCUSSION

MOTIVATE
STUDENTS
STRATEGIES
FACILITATE
DEVELOP
STRATEGIES

UNDERSTANDING
KNOWLEDGE
POSITIVE
ATTITUDE CLASSES
COMMUNICATE COMPREHENSION
MEMORY
PLAN ABILITY EVALUATION
EVALUATION
CLASSES
TEACHING BRAIN
MEMORY
FACILITATEDISCUSSION ATTITUDE
LEARNING SUCCESSFUL
BRAIN
STUDENTS
TEACHING
DEVELOP
FACILITATEINTERACTIVE
MANAGEMENT

Key Essentials of the toolkit!


A positive attitude to pupil learning
Successful implementation of A Curriculum for Excellence requires
teachers to adapt teaching practice to meet pupils needs. Initiatives in
areas such as Assessment, is for Learning which minimizes disruptive
and disengaged behavior. This helps teachers maintain a consistent
focus on pupil learning, internalizing accountability for every learner.
Such clear strategy and good leadership -creates a culture where staff
feel supported and valued as they deliver the curriculum in new ways,
supported by creative and relevant CPD.

An ability to communicate value to


pupils
Pupils learn best when they understand the value of their learning.
Studies of pupils views of what makes a good teacher reinforce this they interpret the curriculum in a way that makes sense, and deliver
content that takes pupils interests and contexts into account.
Therefore as a teacher, one must apply the content to be shared in a
more interestingly commutable way.

Good content knowledge and


understanding
Teachers must have good knowledge of the relevant content and
curriculum areas. Strategies should engage teachers in reflection on
how practice could change, and what the implications are for how
children learn.
Along with having content knowledge, good teachers must use

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evidence to improve learning. A teachers understanding of good


practice, using a range of approaches such as classroom observation
records, research digests, online seminars, case studies and selfevaluation tools is ideal for good education.

A teaching repertoire of many ways


to impart content
Teachers must develop enhanced expertise in teaching practices,
learning new skills and increasing knowledge. All teachers must analyze
their practice and reflect on how they help young people cultivate
knowledge and skill to improve their own work and develop higher
order learning
To achieve this, teachers must know, understand and take account of
childrens learning styles, and this presents a rich area for professional
development activity.

Knowledge and understanding of


connections across curricular areas
A Curriculum for Excellence invites innovative approaches to
interdisciplinary work. While many schools already have excellent
practice in creating connections, it is a significant area for development
for many teachers, particularly in secondary section. Implicit in A
Curriculum for Excellence is the need to move from delivering subject
content to pupils, towards developing ways to pass ownership of the
learning to them.

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In the midst of the worldwide psycho-neurological revolution,


knowledge about the brain and learning is exploding. Memory is a vital
part of learning. For this reason, the shift to student-centered learning
is crucial. Activities such as rhyming and rhythm, physical movement,
multi-modality input, hands-on lessons, discussion, participatory
experiences, constructivism, emotional experiences, personal
meaning, and relevance, must become an integral part of every
teachers daily lessons. Teachers dont need to wait until new brainmind research reaches down to practical teaching, here are the KEY
FACTS teachers can usenow.
! Learning is personal. Learning is a private individual experience
that must be internalized and integrated by each individual.When
teachers present to the class, each student must adapt and apply the
lesson to his/her own existing knowledge. This is the reason for
pairing, small groups, and interactive activities. Teachers can
provide lessons that students must then personalize to make
lessons individually meaningful. Every bit of knowledge that each
student possesses must have meaning that relates to other
meaningful knowledge s/he possesses. Each student has millions
of bits of information available to him/her, but each can only focus
on a little at a time and associate it with his/her existing information
! Classes do not learn. Only individuals learn. They can learn
individually while being a part of a class, but the group does not
learn. If 57% of the members of a class learn something, we may
refer to the group saying, They learned it. But, they didnt learn it.
Each class member either did or did not learn it. It is the individual
differences in students, their prior knowledge, and interest levels
that makes teaching-learning difficult. The more knowledge and
interest a student has in the lesson, the easier it is to learn,
understand, remember, associate, recall, and build on. Group
engagement is not sufficient; any student not engaged cannot be
learning and is probably engaged is something else.
! Learning is constructed. Each learner builds and adds to

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understanding according to his or her own knowledge, thoughts,


ideas, perceptions, experiences, understanding, values,
predisposition and beliefs. If new information does not fit,
connect, or relate to existing knowledge the brain will not accept it.
.That is the reason why teachers must involve kids and utilize their
feedback. Each learner must use his or her own thinking to get it to
fit. Students learn more answering their own questions of why
than by having someone else give them reasons why.
! Learning is meaningful. The 'why' is more important than the 'what'
in learning. New knowledge must connect to previously learned,
relevant, meaningful experiences and knowledge. Learning
relevant information is natural, effortless, and long-lasting. Lack of
meaning is the reason for difficulty in studying for and passing tests.
We do not learn isolated facts except by rote memorization. It is not
possible to learn nonsense except by relating it to already stored
learning using pneumonic or memory gimmicks.
! Learning is interactive. Knowledge requires understanding.
Understanding requires doing something with that knowledge. It
requires using it; use it or lose it, is the motto. Interacting will
almost certainly make it both meaningful and lasting for all students
participating in the class interaction. Pairing and small group
discussions are crucial to important learning in school. If its worth
learning; its worth remembering.
! Learning is emotional. It involves feelings, attitudes, and the
whole-child. Emotions drive learning. We learn what we feel
strongly about. And, we learn it in direct proportion to the
strength of our feelingsespecially our like and dislike feelings.
This is why information about our hobbies and special interests are
learned so quickly and easily. It is why a baseball lover can recite
players names and records, past games, averages and statistics with
minutia of endless trivia. Emotions are why we remember the boy
or girl who sat behind us in the seventh grade, but cant remember
the name of someone we met yesterday. The moral: Get emotional

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in your teaching.
! Learning occurs in the brain. Every cell in the body from the skin to
the muscles can receive information that contributes to learning,
but it all goes through the brain. Our skin, the bodys largest organ,
receives stimuli constantly; from the corn on our little toe, to the
tight belt, to the air conditioner blowing on the back of our neck.
The more neurons that are affected by stimuli coming in from many
sources, the stronger and longer lasting the memory and recall
ability will be. We do not learn by heart, as some think, or by
kidneywe learn by brain. It is by stimuli, and, the more and greater
the variety of stimuli, the better it is for remembering.
! Learning is a social activity. We learn from the company we keep.
What we value in learning depends on what those around us are
learning. Teenagers walk, talk, dress like each other. They change
their music, hair style, language, slang constantly to separate
themselves from other groups; and they copy the behaviors of
those in their own group, meticulously. Learning is very closely
related to socialization with the subcultures to which kids relate or
identify. Some common subcultures of schools are known as eggheads, nerds, geeks, preppies, rah-rahs jocks, jerks,
thugs, dopers, and freaks. Teachers see transfer students
enter school and within minutes easily find and relate to students of
his or her type.
! Learning is predictable. Learning follows laws, patterns, and
procedures. The laws apply to attention, remembering, retrieval,
and forgetting. We already know what turns kids on; what gets their
attention what gets them excited, interested, and motivated; and
what their reaction will be to certain activities. This is the reason
that teachers have intuitively learned to utilize kids interest in
holidays, sports, and extra curricular activities as motivation to
learn. Teachers can learn to use their intuition and their own
personal action research to make better connections with student
intereststhe most predictable precursor for natural learning.

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! Memory is largely an associative process. The brain works by


linking things to other things. Memory relies on patterns, concepts,
meaningfulness, relevance and associations. When we relate new
information to that already in our long-range memory by such
means as similes, metaphors, examples, it can become instantly
memorable. For example, to relate parallel lines to the sides of a
doorway, or edges of a sheet of paper; or to compare fractions to
slicing of a pie has obvious associative value. Better yet, getting kids
to find similes, metaphors, and examples is ideal.
! Conceptual Learning is a spontaneous learning that we do naturally,
effortlessly and unconsciously. Concepts have the association and
meaningfulness that helps learning and memory occur naturally.
Once kids see the concept, most everything else fits in
automatically. Teachers who teach the concept early in a lesson, or
let kids discover concepts for themselves, find that interest,
memorization, and relevance come automatically. Civil war is a
topic conflict is a concept. Planets is a topic systems is a
concept. Equations is a topic balance or equality is a
conceptfractions is a topicaccurate measurement or
representation of a part of a whole is the concept.
! Learning that utilizes higher level thinking effortlessly goes into our
long-term memory. By better understanding the importance of
thinking in relation to learning, teachers can utilize Blooms
Taxonomy of thinking levels. The taxonomy should also be taught
to students so they can identify and apply higher levels of thinking
for themselves.
The taxonomy is usually shown in ascending order of difficulty.
1. Knowledge (remembering facts, lists, names)
2. Comprehension (understanding, getting meaning)
3. Application (solving, using, applying)
4. Analysis (deduction, logic, induction, reasoning)

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5. Synthesis (creating, combining, originating, divergence)


6. Evaluation (judging, selecting, determining importance)
The easiest lessons to teach are the hardest to learn. One of the most
difficult tasks for a student is memorization of factsLevel-One in the
hierarchy of thinking levels. Unfortunately, one of the easiest lessons
to teachers to present, organize, sequence, and evaluate is the hardest
for kids to learn and remember. John Goodlad, in his three year
research involving more than a 1000 teachers, says that 95% of
teaching and testing in classes is done at Level-One thinkingeasiest to
teach, most difficult to learn. When facts are put in meaningful groups
or concepts, theyre more easily learned.
Teachers, who understand the way kids brains utilize their classroom
experiences in a better way, can be even more effective in improving
student achievement, can reach and teach all students, and can find
more satisfaction in involving the kids in student-centered teaching
and learning.

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