How the Brain Learns
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Curriculum Units by Fellows of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute 2009 Volume IV: How We Learn about the Brain How the Brain Learns Curriculum Unit 09.04.03 by Ruth K. Chaffee Introduction As teachers, we strive each day to teach students and to enrich their lives with the delight of knowledge. No knowledge is more fundamental to creating a lifetime learner than beginning to understand neurological function and the actual process of learning. Over the course of four weeks, this unit will introduce high school students to the basic components of the brain, the process of learning, and variables and strategies that can increase or decrease learning success. This unit is designed for instruction in a high school special education resource classroom. All of the students are mainstreamed into regular classrooms, but spend one period of their school day in the resource classroom for pre-teaching, reinforcement, and support on assignments from the regular curriculum. The students in my resource classroom are in all grades of high school, and similar to the regular education setting, the students span a range of abilities, though they all have an identified disability qualifying them for special education services. Although the school district focuses on full inclusion of special education students in the regular classroom, many of the special education students need additional support to be successful. To be enrolled in a Resource Class, a student must have an active Individualized Education Program, and it must be determined by a pupil personnel team that the student is impacted by his or her disability in a way that requires additional instruction and support outside of the regular education classroom. Individualized learning goals and objectives are established to address each student's specific weaknesses. These goals are regularly monitored and progress reports are sent home to the parent quarterly. The Resource Course is intended to support regular education content and individual skill deficits through specialized instruction, accommodations, and pace. The diagnosed disabilities of students in the classroom include learning disabilities, autism, speech/language disorders, attention deficit disorder, and emotional disorders. Many of my students have verbal weaknesses, auditory processing deficiencies, and read below grade level. Many of them also have working memory or long-term memory retrieval difficulties, which significantly impact their learning success. As a result, the instruction in this unit will be highly adapted for their specific learning needs--including lower reading level of materials, extended pacing for instruction, and accessing multiple intelligences. This unit is also written Curriculum Unit 09.04.03 1 of 21 specifically for the small number of students and low student-to-teacher ratio that are defining characteristics of a resource classroom. The unit will begin by teaching students about the basic components and function of the brain-- cerebrum/cortex: occipital, parietal, frontal, and temporal lobe; cerebellum, limbic system, and brainstem. Through activities such as coloring images, students will learn the locations and functions of each part of the brain. The coloring activity will be coupled by digital videos on the brain from United Streaming Discovery Education database, a human skull--so the students can understand where the brain sits within the skull. This portion of the unit will also include a trip to the anatomy lab at Yale Medical School, so that students can see an actual brain. The second section of the unit will address how the brain learns and develops, including some information on disabilities. Many of my students are very frustrated and feel inadequate in the regular classroom. Having a better understanding of their brains and the biological differences between them and their peers will alleviate some of these feelings of inadequacy and help them become better self-advocates. This section of the unit is also designed to expose students to the different capacities of the brain. This will be explored through different videos of savants and incredible feats of memory. The final aspect of the unit will examine different things people can do to affect brain function. Based on biology and brain function, students will learn strategies and techniques to facilitate learning and memory. Does nutrition and sleep play a part in brain function? How many times do you have to practice things before you learn them? In tandem with learning about how to improve brain function, the unit will explore how the brain's learning capacity be disrupted by things such as drugs, alcohol, or brain injury. Unit Objectives At the conclusion of this unit, resource students will be able to: Identify location and basic function of lobes in the brain (cerebrum/cortex: ____ ____ occipital, parietal, frontal, and temporal lobe; cerebellum, limbic system, and ____ ____ brainstem) Identify and explain several brain-based strategies for improving ____ ____ learning/retention Identify and explain activities that can disable the brain's ability to function Students have very little exposure to any anatomy in the high school curriculum, except through the upper Curriculum Unit 09.04.03 2 of 21 level science elective "Anatomy & Physiology." Just as there are certain novels that are accepted into the literary canon, basic knowledge of the brain is assumed in newspaper articles, by doctors, and by teachers. This unit is designed to provide students with a working vocabulary and basic understanding of how their own minds work, so that they can be more successful. This unit will reflect the goals of Special Education in that it will present material at the students' instructional level, while helping them prepare them for the immediate academic challenges of high school. All Connecticut students take the Connecticut Academic Performance Test in March of their sophomore year. Though special education students can receive accommodations, such as extended time and alternate setting, many special education students do not pass and must retake the tests during their junior year. Embedded within the unit are skill-building exercises from the core curriculum areas such as assessing lab reports, identifying the hypothesis, independent variable, and controls, interpreting graphic representations, creating graphs of data, and analysis, comprehension of non-fiction reading materials, and interdisciplinary writing. Preparing for Transition: Real-World Skills and Self-Advocacy In the realm of special education, once a student reaches the age of 15, planning begins for the transition from a supported high school environment into a post-school job, school, or training program. There have been recent shifts in special education policy which have re-emphasized the role of high school personnel in transitioning a student. Although not all students are headed into a university program, I work to create a classroom of life-long learners. While students will be striving towards different goals, they all need support in developing knowledge of their own learning and how their own behavior can affect that learning. Central to this unit is developing students' self-knowledge. How do they learn best? What can they do to remember instruction? What can they learn about themselves as learners so that they can be more successful? The second half of this unit will provide students with biologically and research-based methods to improve their learning. Adaptations for the Regular Classroom Although this unit is designed to function in a special education setting, much of the material can be easily adapted for used in the regular education classroom. Parts of this unit may be appropriate for a Biology or Anatomy and Physiology course. One of the lessons included is for a CAPT interdisciplinary writing practice, which could be taught in a Social Studies course. Suggestions for the regular education setting include: increased pace, more challenging texts, independent reading, and homework assignments. Strategies Digital Natives Technology allows for unimaginable connections between people around the world, or within the same classroom. As Marc Prensky argues in his article, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants," "as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today's students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors" (Prensky, 2001, p.1). Prensky believes that as teachers, we should adapt to this new "digital native" student and provide information in new media forms. This unit will employ digital texts, such as interactive Shockwave web programs and video clips to illustrate Curriculum Unit 09.04.03 3 of 21 brain functions and abnormalities and to allow students to connect to the information through different intelligences. Digital texts, video, and interactive technology also increase student engagement and access multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1993). Data Team Process Schools within New Haven are expected to employ the five-step data team process, with instructional units. The most essential component of this process is the use of pre- and post-tests. These tests should be nearly identical in structure and content so that they provide an accurate model of student knowledge growth and an indicator of topics that need re-teaching. This unit will utilize this process on the unit level--beginning with a pre-test and ending with a parallel summative assessment. Daily Structure Many of my students require numerous repetitions and a very slow pace in order to grasp new material. During the first part of the unit, when students are learning about the different parts of the brain, each day's lesson will have a warm-up activity that reviews the prior day's topic and an exit slip that review's the day's topic. Students will be given a graphic of a brain to label and space to explain the primary functions of each part of the brain. Simple graphics of the brain are easily available online to use for this exercise. These two informal assessments will be indicative of student learning and comprehension and will guide the pacing of the unit.